Al Franken
gregladen | June 30, 2009UPDATE: COLEMAN CONCEDES
The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge by Norm Coleman, thereby leaving the vote count determined by an election contest judicial panel placing Franken in the lead standing.
The basis of the Coleman legal challenge is was essentially that all abentee votes shoudl be counted no matter what, because they are, after all, votes.
The reason that is bad election procedure and bad law is that absentee voting is subject to serious abuses, and thus demands a certain amount of procedural control. This has been established previously. The absentee…
gregladen | June 30, 2009After nearly eight months, Al Franken has won the election to the United States Senate.
There are indications that Pawlenty will sign the election certificate.
I'll update shortly as soon as I have more information.
UPDATE HERE
UPDATE UPDATE: COLEMAN CONCEDES
gregladen | June 29, 2009Time Pawlenty has become famous for his ability to be extraordinarily vague. Now we are seeing this in relation to the expected Minnesota State Supreme Court decision on the Franken-Coleman Senate election contest.
For the most part, Pawlenty has signaled that he will only sign the election certificate if he is instructed to do so by the court. He has implied, therefore that he will not sign it if he is not instructed even if the court has made a decision.
He has not explicitly stated which court he is referring to, but it seems that he is expecting that the state court may instruct him to…
gregladen | June 18, 2009The Minnesota Supreme Court spokesperson Lissa "No-that-is-not-a-typo" Finne has told Greg Sargent's Blog that the other blogs suggesting that the court would issue a decision today are incorrect. Finne indicates that sometimes the court tells the involved parties on Monday about a decision on Thursday, other times they come out with notification only minutes before the decision is announced.
So, this means ... who knows. Don't be holdin' yer breath is all.
gregladen | June 18, 2009According to various sources which can not be named but that are being reported by the Capitol Report, the Minnesota Supreme Court is likely to make a decision today, Thursday, June 18th. If the decision is anything other than to support (uphold) the decision of the three judge panel which previously ruled in Franken's favor, several legal experts in the state and across the country are going to drop dead on the spot of shock and chagrin.
It is not know if Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty is going to be ordered by the court to produce an election certificate, but it is generally thought…
gregladen | June 17, 2009Minnesota Post reports from the Minnesota Independent a Twitter Report from Matt HIll indicating that Al Franken and Norm Coleman were on the same flight to Washington DC yesterday.
The outgoing Senator, Coleman was in First Class. Franken was in Coach.
Just thought you'd like to know....
gregladen | June 4, 2009Legal experts are largely undivided in the opinion that Norm Coleman's Minnesota Supreme Court bid to overturn a lower judicial panel's decisions regarding the vote count in the Minnesota Senate race is senseless and has no chance whatsoever of winning.
This opinion was widely held prior to the presentation of arguments by Coleman, but now, with some real face time in the high court behind us, in which we see the arguments for real, and see the reaction by the judges, it is confirmed and certain that Coleman's fate is sealed.
But what is not known at this time is the fate of Governor Pawlenty…
gregladen | May 1, 2009US Supreme Court David Souter will retire at the end of the current court term.
Amerians: THIS is why we needed to elect a Democrat to office.
NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term.
The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.
NPR
This, of course, makes two things very very important. Listen carefully.
1) Franken has to get to Washington.
2) All other progressive and Democratic Caucus Senators have to be preserved in place and it…
gregladen | April 26, 2009Only 28 percent of Minnesotans think Coleman's current appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court is appropriate. Sixty four percent think he should give up now. Seventy three percent feel that he should not go beyond the State Supreme Court if he loses there. The will of the people has been heard in both the voting booth and the polls.
This will not affect former Senator Norm Coleman's strategies, because the will of the people is of no concern to him. Coleman will continue with the State Supreme Court appeal, and when he loses there (and he will) he will continue on to the US supreme court.…
gregladen | April 23, 2009Al Franken is about to be seated as the Junior Senator from Minnesota after a long and costly battle between loser Norm Coleman and Senator Franken. Al won the election by just a few hundred votes, and three of those votes are mine.
So, we have me and about 100 other people just like me to thank for overthrowing the Coleman Regime. Let this be a lesson to all of you who have the opportunity to vote and do not, or who have the opportunity to go out and work for a few hours for a candidate but do not. You are missing out.
How did I get three (or maybe more) votes for Al? Well, one of them…
gregladen | April 22, 2009Norm Coleman has requested a more "leisurely" (as the Star Tribune calls it) schedule for his recount appeal. What is more leisurely? The Coleman team would like oral arguments to begin no sooner than mid-May, and easily later than that.
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Clearly, the hypothesis that Norm Coleman is simply playing a delaying game stands, still, unrejected.
gregladen | April 21, 2009The Star Tribune reports that Norm Coleman has filed an appeal with the Minnesota Supreme Court. He did so late Monday. I believe this is nine days after the lower judicial panel's decision, which places this appeal just under the deadline. Clearly, Coleman has a strategy in mind that has little to do with the advancement of Democracy or the representation of Minnesotans. He should be ashamed of himself. But he appears to lack that emotion. Perhaps he was knocked on the head as a kid or something.
gregladen | April 20, 2009A joint project by Democrats has flipped traditional fund-raising on its head, by starting a campaign aimed at collecting $1 a day from supporters "to make Norm Coleman go away."
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a new group working to get like-minded candidates elected, has teamed up with Howard Dean's Democracy for America to tap the wallets of Democrats who are disgruntled by the five-month-old ballot contest in Minnesota between Mr. Coleman, the former Republican senator, and Al Franken, the Democrat.
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gregladen | April 18, 2009Eric Black of MinnPost Dot Com has made an interesting observation. Last week the three judge panel charged with hearing Norm Coleman's "Election Contest" (that's a thing ... an election contest is a kind of suit claiming that an election did not go properly) finished their job. They ruled against some of Coleman's claims, but they did count extra ballots as Colman had insisted. That addition of new ballots -- all absentee ballots -- resulted in Franken's lead growing.
From that ruling, the plaintiff has ten days to file an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The appeal itself is a…
gregladen | April 13, 2009The judicial panel hearing Coleman's challenge against Franken in the Minnesota Senate Race has made its decision: Franken is the the winner of the election and should be certified. The procedure is this: A ten day period occurs after which the Governor certifies the election. Unless there is a challenge in the State Supreme Court.
Colman has been ordered to pay Franken's legal costs.
Coleman is expected to continue to obstruct democracy. About half the people of this state knew he was a bastard before this started. That number has grown.
GIVE IT UP, NORM!!!!!!
gregladen | April 7, 2009According to news reports, the Minnesota Election Contest Judicial Panel finished their review of votes, counting just under 400 absentee ballots that were previous excluded. These votes were included as the result of Former Senator Norm Coleman's legal challenge to the election. With Senator Al Franken's lead over Former Senator Norm Coleman rising from 225 at the start of the process to 312 as of a few moments ago, it would appear that Coleman's challenge has backfired.
The judicial panel still has a few more issues to rule on.
One of the issues os the ca 130 votes that were lost in a…
gregladen | April 6, 2009The three judge panel convened for the purpose of addressing the Coleman challenge of the Minnesota Senate Election won by Al Franken (after a detailed recount) will meet today to examine ballots they had asked brought to the court. The panel had asked for four hundred ballots, but a small number of these (just over a dozen) had already been included in the recount and thus will not be examined.
The panel will examine the 387 or so ballots today, and decide which should be counted. Tomorrow, in a two step process the ballots will be opened by the judged (step one) and counted by court…
gregladen | March 31, 2009The judicial panel that has been off somewhere deciding what to do about the Coleman election challenge has ordered 400 additional ballots opened and counted on April 7th.
If (and we do not know this for a fact) these are THE remaining ballots to count, them Coleman would have to get a statistically unlikely majority to overtake Franken's lead of 225 votes. I suppose this is possible. So I suppose we'll be sitting on the edges of our respective seats for the next week.
There does not seem to be any systematic meaningful bias in which candidate is likely to come out ahead in this group.…
gregladen | March 31, 2009
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Note the continued threats of violence by the Right Wing. We continue to await word from the court.
gregladen | March 24, 2009In conversation with reporters earlier today Coleman noted that he does not anticipate this case going to the US Supreme Court, though he did apparently say this in his usual smarmy way so he can change his mind later. He did indicate that he DOES anticipate bringing the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court if the judicial panel now considering the case rules against his claim.
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