Republicans feel they now have a stolen election of their own to rival Bush v. Gore, said Chris Cillizza and Paul Kane in The Washington Post. After seven weeks and a painstaking hand recount of 2.9 million ballots, the official winner of Minnesota’s “dead heat” of a Senate race is Democrat Al Franken. The state Canvassing Board this week certified that Franken, the former Saturday Night Live comedian and liberal gadfly, emerged with a razor-thin, 225-vote edge over Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. “But that doesn’t mean the race is definitely over,” said Amy Forliti in Huffingtonpost.com. Coleman has vowed to challenge the board’s findings, claiming that 654 ballots were improperly rejected. The mess now falls into the lap of the Minnesota Supreme Court, which could leave the outcome in doubt for weeks, if not months.
If ever an election required a careful judicial review, it’s this one, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Clearly, something fishy has been going on. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Coleman. Yet now he’s miraculously ahead—thanks to “the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board.” Throughout the recount, officials have been “flagrantly inconsistent” in adjudicating disputed, duplicated, lost, or otherwise “dubious” votes. But in almost every case, they’ve favored Franken. And somebody still needs to explain how some 25 precincts “recorded more ballots than voters who signed in to vote.” Minnesotans may have to live for a while with only one senator. But that’s better than seating a “tainted and undeserving” one.
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