The news from 2015: Senate recount is settled at last (whimsy from the Star-Tribune)

[brooklynite]

The U.S. Supreme Court stunned the nation today with a 5-4 decision holding that Al Franken -- until recently the Obama administration's ambassador to the Vatican -- was the official winner of the 2008 Minnesota Senate contest.

The court held that lower courts had erred by refusing to count three decisive absentee ballots for Franken found two years ago jammed in the filter of a Brooklyn Park woman's vacuum cleaner. "Every vote must count," proclaimed Chief Justice Al Gore, who read his 936-page decision from the bench.

...snip...

After the seventh recount of the vote was completed in September 2009 -- settling nothing since both candidates challenged every vote cast -- Franken filed simultaneous legal proceedings in state and federal courts, before the European Commission of Human Rights and with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2010, Coleman suffered a setback when the Supreme Court issued its first decision on the contest. In what became known as the "Franken's Fools" decision, the court held that even those absentee ballots that voters forgot to mail must be counted.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/35436274.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUec7PaP3E77K_0c::D3aDhUiacyKUnciaec8O7EyU

[chaplainM]

1. "Ambassador to the Vatican!"

Nice touch. I also like the appeal to AMPAS, given the artistic success/commercial failure of "Stuart Saves his Family."

[Eric J in MN]

2. Katherine Kersten is a right-winger, making fun of the idea...

...of the Franken campaign that if someone didn't sign the outer-envelope of an absentee ballot, but has signed an affadivit that it's his ballot, then his vote should count.

I agree with the Franken campaign about this.

Some counties contacted people who voted-by-mail and didn't sign the envelope and gave them a second-chance to come in and sign.

Other counties didn't even tell people whose absentee ballots were rejected.

Everyone who voted-by-mail but didn't sign the envelope should get a second chance.

The US Constitution: "Equal Protection of the Law."