Man, it's time to hit the Gong on this clown. Enough is enough already. Sounds like Normie is worried about being able to find a real job. Poor kid!

The Coleman camp makes one argument and contradicts that argument with another. With that kind of logic, of course they think the election is fatally flawed. But it's not the election that is flawed, it's them.

Al Franken is going to be Senator as long as he wants by the time these idiots are done. It's a Law of unintended consequences thing. But maybe I shouldn't be pointing that out. But I mean really there's a point where you can go to far and Colemans gone well past that point.

Outlaw all the electronic vote tabulation devices and have a re-vote. It would be cheaper than wasting money fighting in court while our country goes off the financial abyss with no senator at all.

Anyone have a way to contact this fool and his enablers? He should be offered a warm cup of milk and led to the room with padded walls.

Why isn't a claim of election fraud being lodged against the Coleman group, a warrant issued for all communications, and then wiretap the bastard?!

Bribery investigation on Coleman...Is it going forward?

Please understand that, while e-voting seriously sucks, this particular protracted fight would have been happening even if the paper ballots had been publicly hand-counted first off without any e-tabulation... it's the GOP doing this, not Coleman per se, and it's all about keeping another Democratic candidate from being seated in the Senate.

Thus the GOP is willing to finance Coleman's many lawyers, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into any possible or impossible legal challenge, just to keep Franken from being
seated for even one day more.

It's a terrible waste of dwindling GOP funds... so just let them be

Take it to the Supreme Court Normy....Dom Scalia will side with you...!

the rnc will fight tooth and nail til the bitter end for an idiot like coleman(who is being investigated for corruption) while the dems roll over on one of their own at any breeze(like durbin has done to burris)

dear senator durbin,
where was ur outrage and demands for criminal investigations when republican denny haskert was selling nuclear secrets to pakistan?

whr was ur outrage when the public learned that(insert previous rep from central illinois,s name)had voted on trade bills with some south american country while he and his wife were buying/selling/profiting from real estate deals in that country?
signed,a loyal democratic taxpayer

ZapKitty, I love you.
But we part ways.

If the ballots were publicly hand counted with public oversight, a clear winner would have been officially announced.

If you want to get into how chain of custody got compromised. Then you want to get into an argument for keeping electronic vote tabulation devices forever.

With all these people unemployed. Certainly the man (and woman) power is available to hold a freaking election with no problems.

The argument for cost is becoming mute -IMO
The Cost is HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, THE DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING OUR COUNTRY STOOD FOR, AND A REAL POSSIBILITY NOW THAT WITH A BOND MARKET CRASH, THE DEATH OF OUR GOVERNMENT ITSELF.

Played honest? Got a Pension? too bad.

That's what these machines cost.
It's time to uphold the OATH OF OFFICE
It's time to OUTLAW ELECTRONICS IN ELECTIONS
It's time to TAKE OUR AIRWAVES (SPECTRUM) BACK.

GOP = Grand Obstructionist Party. Your taxpayer dollars at work, Minnesota!

Phil and ZapKitty, I love you both.
But I'll have to side with Zap on this one.

Happily, there were no electronic "ballots" (as cast on DREs) in this election to contend with. It was all paper, even if "counted" the first time by flawed electronic tabulators.

The hand-count was rather pristine (at least in its transparency), thanks to MN's law and SoS Ritchie's oversight of it. Questions of chain of custody issues (at least legitimate ones, and at least as far as the voted, versus unvoted ballots are concerned), has not come into play here during the contest.

The questions being raised, as Zap points out, would have been raised no matter what by a set of attorneys insisting on hiding behind the legitimate legal system to make their political hay.

The court sides with Zap this time! (gavel bang, bang.) Sorry, Phil. Next case! (Though you are welcome to file your appeal, of course.)

Well when you put the FACTS out like that then I tend to shut up Brad.

Love restored to the ZapKitty.

MY APPEAL?~!
On the other hand, the FACTS/truth reveal as Brad said, "counted the first time by flawed electronic tabulators"

Simple: OUTLAW IT!

No electronic tabulation devices in any form what so ever.

IRIS, OCR, Bla Blagh crap ...

Althought I do NOT speak for Brad, I am sure he agrees.

Well, I don't know who I'm siding with, here, because, while zap has an impeccable point, I can't help but think machines had to have been responsible for the race ending up this close. MN is a BLUE state, and it voted its head off for Obama. How can so many Democrats have been happy enough with Coleman's shit to hold Franken's comedic history against him to the point where they'd choose that pig over the funny guy? It doesn't make sense to me. Of course, very little in politics makes sense to me, but, really, I think we're letting this monster "controversy" and our happiness about MN's Secretary of State distract us from the underlying fishiness of Colemen getting that close to Franken in the count, and the recount.

It's just too stupid.

maybe British PM George Galooway would like to argue against the Coal-man position for old times sake?

After practicing law for 31 years, I find myself fortunate enough to have gone into a state of semi-retirement. While I am still winding down the last of several very large cases, I have had the luxury to watch the last few days of the Coleman/Franken proceedings at Uptake.org

It is fairly clear that Coleman's attorney's know full-well that they cannot possibly prevail before the three-judge panel. Most of their exhibits are being excluded as irrelevant given the content of the panel's prior ruling that absentee ballots that were not lawfully cast cannot be counted. Most of the exhibits they do get in are accepted by the court only in support of Coleman's "offer of proof"--meaning that these are only coming in to set up an appeal, and on numerous occasions, Franken's attorneys have shown that the ballots Coleman now wants open are the very same ballots which were not counted because team Coleman had objected to them.

The Coleman "fatally flawed" argument is based on a contention that he is being denied equal protection because the election boards previously counted some absentee ballots that would not meet the criteria delineated by the 3 judge panel as not being lawfully cast for the ballots Coleman now wants opened. But Coleman cannot show this to be a systemic problem, and a ruling in his favor on this issue would essentially mean that the entire U.S. system of county-by-county systems with differing results violates equal protection--a major stretch, though I must say, until the SCOTUS delivered its decision in Bush v Gore, I had thought the Bush legal argument a stretch.

Regardless of outcome, it seems clear team Coleman is trying to delay the addition of a 59th Democratic Senator as long as possible.

I don't know why the SCOTUS decision in Bush v Gore should have changed your mind. It might have changed mine if they hadn't made it a one-off, which I don't think they can even do even though they did, so ....

Have there been any recent polls in Minnesota asking how people would vote today in a Coleman vs. Franken race? I'm guessing that Franken would poll much more strongly than he did in November. If that is so, then maybe the move for a re-vote should be embraced as a perhaps quicker way to resolve this issue.

It didn't change my mind, Agent 99, in the sense that because of the SCOTUS decision I concluded that the Bush arguments were indeed correct. To the contrary, I think the Bush v. Gore decision was probably the worst SCOTUS decision since Dred Scott. It simply reminded me that the outcome of litigation is not always predictable.

As a litigator, attorneys learn early on that being right does not always equate to prevailing in an individual case.

Dr. Rickles, the issue is not whether Franken would prevail in a new election, though there is no doubt that Coleman would love to get a do-over. Its that Franken already prevailed in the last one. The three judge panel has made it clear that its role is to confirm who received the most votes of the votes lawfully cast. It is exceedingly likely that it will find that Franken is the winner. The only question then will be whether Franken will be sworn in pending an appeal or whether Coleman, having lost both the recount and the contest, will be permitted to delay the seating of a 2d U.S. Senator from MN while he pursues an appeal first before the MN Sup. Ct. and then before the SCOTUS.

Coleman lost, He needs to give up and let the Democrats fix the problems that the Republicans made, once again.

I do agree though the election process is flawed, electronic voting is a sham! We need to get rid of electronic vetoing till the process can be verified.

The way the process should work is you vote and you get a receipt w/ specific number linked with your choice. The companies that engineered the voting machines also make ATMs so the idea of a receipt is not beyond the technology, if we were all given a receipt with a specific number a recount would be rather simple compared to today, you simply go back to the place you voted input the number on your receipt, than the information is posted on-line / book / paper so all can read and verify that there number is correctly tied to the candidate that they voted for.

Since the numbers will be a random, publishing the numbers will not divulge your identity and / or who you voted for. This makes the process trustworthy, verifiable and anonymous.

What do you think???

Thanks for clearing that up!

Yes, indeed I know about the fear of another as horrifying decision. I do. I do. At the time, before all the heinous stuff that came of it, as it was explained to me, I could almost see some sense in it, feel the beginning of a maybe-something-positive-could-come-of-this-heinous-turn-of-events-even-if-I-hate-it-to-bits, but then the other shoe dropped... the part about that decision not being applicable as precedent, even though I've heard of people trying to use it as such anyway. That's when I lost my cool completely.

I don't have that much experience with Supreme Court rulings, but I don't think they can do that, and yet everyone went right along as though they can. It was clearly an attempt to keep crappy precedent off the books while installing the crappy president of their choice, and I thought the whole purpose of maintaining the Supremes was to provide solid precedent, period.

Everyone is psychotic... too many toxins in the water or air or something.

I agree with CANN4ING. I don't think its about Coleman. I believe the RNC is behind this - to stop another seat from being in Dem control.

Whatever happened to the FBI investigation of Colman? That seems to have dropped from the media. That wouldn't decide the election, of course, but without Coleman as a viable alternative, maybe the Republicans would finally have to pack it in. Of course, knowing them, they would probably say the election was unfair because Coleman was "tainted" by the FBI investigation...

"this particular protracted fight would have been happening even if the paper ballots had been publicly hand-counted first off without any e-tabulation"

That premise requires that the e-voting results match what would have happened with paper counting. If someone tried to steal an election, paper certainly would NOT match electronic. Hence, we need to get rid of electronic all together, because we know for a _fact_ that they are very prone to problems that cause their reported results to be something very different than the voter's intent.

What I find amazing about this whole thing is the absolute hypocrisy of the right-wing. They win, and it's all but proved they cheat, and they say "you're just mad because we won, just deal with it". They lose, and there's nothing to support allegations of cheating, so they cry "we want a do over!".

What happened to "you lost, just deal with it"?

Brad, didn't you have a video on your site where someone put a card in a tabulator, that card passed muster and looked fine to the machine, paper ballots were run through, and the results were completely wrong because the card was pre-loaded with negative numbers on one side, and positive on the other? ... not electronic votes, just electronic tabulating. And still easily hacked.

I have a question, did the recount use electronic tabulation (again), or was everything hand counted?.. just curious.

Mr. Ethiopian's (#20) Freudian typo of the moment: "We need to get rid of electronic vetoing till the process can be verified."

(As to the rest of his notion, no, not good. Could lead to vote buying/selling. You don't need to know that your vote was counted correctly, you need to be able to know that every vote was counted correctly.)

Savanster asked:

Brad, didn't you have a video on your site where someone put a card in a tabulator, that card passed muster and looked fine to the machine, paper ballots were run through, and the results were completely wrong because the card was pre-loaded with negative numbers on one side, and positive on the other?

Yes. That was from the climactic final scene of HBO's documentary "Hacking Democracy", showing the first known hack of a paper ballot election using an electronic tabulator. You can watch the scene right here (about 10 amazing minutes).

I have a question, did the recount use electronic tabulation (again), or was everything hand counted?

The post-election recount was a fully transparent, completely hand-counted process. Thankfully.

Brad, it's refreshing to see that you take the time to read comments and respond to them. I think it important that your readers understand that the current dispute is not about either E-voting or the accuracy of the recount. While your blog, over the past several years, has provided perhaps the best documentation of the unreliability of E-voting, the Coleman "contest" underscores the care that voters must exercise if they seek to by-pass E-voting via the absentee ballot.

The three-judge panel ruling delineates a myriad of ways in which a MN voter can err in the submission of an absentee ballot preventing one's vote from ever being counted, such as a failure to sign, either by the voter or the witness, failure to list a complete address, failure to submit to the correct precinct, etc.

While the panel ruling applying strict standards for absentee ballot acceptance favors Franken in this particular election, it is vital that those choosing to vote by absentee ballot understand the care required to meet their state's standards when choosing that method of voting.

If that creep Coleman gets a do-over I hope that the people of Wisconsin have had enough of that SOB that they overwhelmingly vote for Franken so that there is NO!!! doubt that that is the state of Wellstone.

In accordance to the 17th amendment to the U.S. Constitution the U.S. Senate ultimately decides who wins. If Coleman wants to claim that the election was fatally flawed --- that's fine. The Senate will pick the winner, and it will not be him.

The three judge panel's 2/18/09 ruling rejecting his right to call an expert witness on his equal protection argument pretty much sums up the near certainty that Coleman will lose his contest. The court said:

"The only question that can be decided in an election contest is which party received the highest number of legally cast votes, and therefore is entitled to receive the certificate of election. Minn. Stat. §209.12. The Court will be reviewing all ballots presented according to the uniform standard contained in Minnesota Statutes Chapter 203B. It is irrelevant whether there were irregularities between the counties in applying Minnesota Statutes §203B.12, subd. 2, prior to this election contest. The Court does not believe Banaian's testimony would assist in determining the issues properly before it."

Don't be surprised when Coleman takes office. These guys (the GOP) don't play by the rules, they play to win. Democrats should have pulled a Bilbray --- seated Franken before the election could be contested --- just like the GOP did with Bilbray (R-San Diego). But the Democratic Party lacks the spine and a dangling pair to act so boldly. Republicans: Effectively changing our democracy into a demockery.

if god really wants him to serve he should just let us all know, you know just come down and let it be known, I'd be ok with that, otherwise send the whiner home...

You want fatally flawed? Fatally flawed was when Paul Wellstone was murdered in 2002 - days before the election - and Coleman took his Senate seat.

Coleman and the RNC are not used to failing in their schemes. Coleman lost because more people voted for Al Franken. Probably more than their rigged machines actually tallied. And he lost because Al Franken stayed away from small private airplanes.

It's over. It's time for Coleman to crawl back into the woodwork.

Phil wants a revote. But the votes were counted and recounted and Al Franken won. It doesn't matter if it was by 250,000 votes or 250 votes or 1 vote. All votes were counted and he won.
We don't replay the superbowl because one team beat the other by 1 point.
To rerun the race because Coleman is a sore loser is anti-democratic.

Coleman is a pig, but I have to admit I was not surprised that he got that many votes that it was close.
Minnesota is known as a blue state but look at the piece of crap governor we have - he was a contender for the VP slot with McCrap! And then there's Michelle Bachman! She won re-election!!
I have to admit that I think Franken ran a lousy campaign. I voted for him, I had my lawn sign out for him, but he ran a crappy campaign. Most of the ads I saw attacked Coleman for his various trips he had taken on lobbyists' money. Meanwhile Coleman had an ad that attacked Franken for being against the employee's right to a secret ballot - I think this was effective to some degree. I never saw Franken explain this. I know a lot of dems were disgusted with Franken and either didn't vote at all for senator or voted for the 3rd party candidate.
With Pawlenty, Bachman and now this Coleman whining, crap, we are becoming a laughing stock.