Citizen Power

What’s going on with the MN Senate recount? We still don’t have a winner! Lots of frowning, incomprehension, and indecision. See the picture here? Some people actually vote like that. I wonder if they should even be allowed to vote at all if they are that indecisive.

There are still daily, nearly hourly, reports of Norm Coleman falling behind and Al Franken taking the lead, or vice versa, but this situation changes frequently. This week, it will change again. Both sides are full of “projections”. (It seems the only candidate’s team that gets their projections into print lately are those of Franken). Gradually, as this drags on and on, people care less and less. Misinformation still abounds everywhere online. This isn’t over yet, no matter what Franken’s people project. When the recount is finally over, there will be weeks to follow of lawsuits.

There will not be a new Minnesota Senator on January 6th unless Governor Tim Pawlenty appoints an interim senator (I hope he chooses Jesse Ventura, but he won’t), and there are signs he may appoint one. Lately, he has reportedly been asking around for advice on how and when to do that. Meanwhile, this endless senate race is going on and on and on. Some of us are bored with it. Both men seem to have more bad qualities than good, at this point. I still want Franken to win, but only because he’s not Norm Coleman.*

This will all have to be reviewed when the recount is over. The problem is that there seems to be no hard and fast rules when dealing with absentee ballots, and many of them were rejected, and now they are supposedly going to be counted — but not all of them. See what a mess this is? I have lost all faith in the Minnesota voting system. I don’t even know if MY vote counted after all of this.

Here’s why people have reason to wonder: (from the Strib)
“Ray Hermanson of Roseville had his absentee ballot rejected along with his wife’s. The cryptic reason cited by Ramsey County for the rejection of the ballots — “AB materials for R-1 issued, should have been R-2.”

What does that mean??

This little summary appeared Sunday in the Star Tribune:

If you’re confused about the twists and turns of the recount in the U.S. Senate race, here’s an attempt to straighten things out. Points: [paraphrased]

– Ballot Challenges are cases in which one campaign disagreed with how the recount official awarded a vote after inspecting the ballot. Challenged ballots were set aside to be reviewed later by the Canvassing Board. That’s what the board was doing the past week.

– On Tuesday and Wednesday, the board dealt almost exclusively with challenges made by the Franken campaign. Because most challenges were rejected, most of the challenged ballots were awarded to Coleman, causing his vote total to increase. On Thursday and Friday, when the board reviewed challenges that were made by Coleman and rejected most of them, Franken picked up ground and went ahead.

– There are a couple of matters still to be resolved. The biggest is allocating to each candidate the votes from about 5,000 ballot challenges that were withdrawn before the Canvassing Board met.

– Those votes won’t be added to the official totals until the Canvassing Board addresses the issue, possibly on Monday morning or perhaps Tuesday.

*I’m not even sure how Al Franken is qualified to be a Senator. He’s been a comedian, a screen writer, a political/comedy book author, and a radio show host. How does that make you qualified to be a U.S. Senator? Maybe I’m missing that part in his background where he went to law school or was a professor or something. I just don’t see how he’s qualified based on his work in the media. If he was a woman with that background he would not have even be considered for the senate race.

At the same time, Caroline Kennedy, who actually did go to law school and wrote books about the Constitution and history, and has been very involved in national politics (in 2008), and has been a lawyer, is being accused of being unqualified to be a senator. How does that make sense? (I think in her case, it’s clearly a case of sexism. When her brother John was alive, he failed the bar exam at least 3 times, yet people were clamoring for him to run for the Senate. He started a magazine, George, and showed very little interest in running for the Senate, yet people thought he’d be a good senator. Based on what? The fact that he was handsome and famous? Yet somehow his sister isn’t good enough for the Senate, according to several people slamming her at the moment. I don’t know what to make of that except to explain it as blatant sexism.

UPDATE:   (in part  because I spelled her name wrong!)
One example of her qualifications <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Kennedy”>from wikipedia</a>:

<blockquote>”Kennedy is a member of the New York and Washington, D.C. bar associations. She is also a member of the boards of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.”
Kennedy and Ellen Alderman have written two books together on civil liberties:

* In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights In Action (1991)
* The Right to Privacy (1995)

On her own, she has edited these New York Times best-selling volumes:

* The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2001)
* Profiles in Courage for Our Time (2002)
* A Patriot’s Handbook (2003)
</blockquote>

Al Franken has never been an attorney or a mayor or on the city council, to the best of my knowledge.  Yet few people questioned his qualifications in public and Minnesota did not get to hear a good debate on his actual qualifications, only some ’scandals’ concerning his past writing.  I have 2 Al Franken books and think they are very funny and well-written, but I’m perplexed how they or his background prepare him in any way for being a U.S. Senator.

Wishing he would win at this point is due to Norm Coleman and the fact that he’s a terrible senator. How could Franken be worse?

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