Arkansas Blog

So this time it is Coleman who wants "every vote counted" and the Democrats that want to deny voters their rights?

"Unless Coleman wins a pending court petition that seeks to add hundreds more ballots to the recount, the counting is done and the Canvassing Board can sign off on the result on Monday or Tuesday. The result cannot be certified for at least a week under state law. In that time, the loser of the recount can challenge the result in court. "

mud, not exactly. Franken's position all along has been that every legitimate vote should be counted, even those absentee ballots that were mistakenly ruled at first not to have met the legal requirements for such ballots. At one point election officials determined that roughly 1,350 absentee ballots had been wrongly set aside and the votes never counted. The Minnesota Supreme Court subsequently ruled that those absentee ballots meeting the state's legal requirements should be counted, but unfortunately the Supreme Court also included a requirement that both campaigns had to agree on which absentee votes should be counted. Both campaigns refused to accept some of those 1,350 absentee ballots, leaving the 933 that were opened and counted yesterday.

The Coleman campaign now wants to include additional absentee ballots that election officials determined did not meet the legal requirements for such ballots. That's the crux of the Coleman lawsuit over 600+ ballots the Coleman campaign now wants counted. And, to no one's surprise, most of those ballots come from areas that voted strongly for Coleman.

If absentee ballots that do not meet the legal requirements are to be counted, then ALL absentee ballots statewide should be counted, not just the ones Coleman thinks are likely votes or him. 'Nuf said.

Yeah, it's just there is always "someone" wanting to count "all "the votes and "someone" who insists that voters follow the rules.

Repubs and Dems can take either side. Their followers usualy think their position is "correct"

mud, I do agree that both parties take partisan stands on such election issues. That shouldn't be the case.

I'll add that Republicans in far more cases are the ones working to disenfranchise voters, even if they can't legally do so. As a veteran, that makes me madder than hell.

Remember when a Florida House race in 2006 had 18,000 missing votes on touch screen voting machines? That election was contested in court, but the 'winner', not counting any missing votes, was seated and voted until the legal challenge was decided. Since the touch screen voting machines did not use a paper backup like we do in Pulaski County, there was nothing to 'recount' and no way to determine if those 18,000 voters just decided not to vote for either party's candidate (fat chance). That's the way it should have played out, and that's the way it should play out in Minnesota and everywhere else. I'm specifically not mentioning which party's candidate won in Florida because it doesn't and shouldn't matter.