All My Sins ... I Said That I Would Pay For Them

(Closed Circuit to Bruce: I'm still OK. The excessive posting means nothing.)

I've added a link on the right for people who might think this site needs more bacon. You're welcome. I've also added a couple of humor blogs to the ol' 'roll; The Comics Curmudgeon who reads and mocks the funny pages (so you don't have to), and The Bloggess doesn't seem to have a purpose, but is pretty fuckin' funny.

We're still senatorless. The recount has been long and ugly. The Republicans have done nothing but claim fraud since well before the election. They call Democrats "elitists," yet say that unless you filled in your oval perfectly on the ballot that you are stupid and, contrary to state law, your vote shouldn't count. They claim that only Democrats are stupid enough to not follow the rules on the ballot. They yell about illegal votes, yet there's is the only party to receive a bona-fide illegal vote.

Every attack of the Franken campaign's tactics during the recount could be aimed at Coleman as well, especially when it came to challenging ballots. Remember when Coleman said if he were losing at the end of an election he'd concede? It was a stupid statement then, and when the wind changes, it's challenge time. I have no problem with election challenges brought under state law. That's a good thing in an election this close. It's just nice to see Coleman finally thinking state election law is good. Too bad it's only when it benefits him.

I spent most of 2 hours earlier today listening to paid Republican operative Michael Brodkorb claiming that SOS Ritchie stole the election for the Democrats. I say claiming, because he didn't actually give any evidence to the point. In fact, when someone challenged him for evidence, he said a few things about irregularities in the precincts and then hung up on her.

Yes, there were irregularities. There was 1 (not 23, as the WSJ claimed) precinct with 31 more votes than those who signed in. It's an acknowledged mistake involving absentee sign-ins. And there was a precinct where there were fewer ballots than votes counted on election night. Michael says there was a double standard because they accepted the ballot count in one place and the machine count in another. Pay close attention: These are two different issues. If two precincts had fewer ballots than votes and they were treated differently, that would be a double standard. What Brodkorb's outraged about isn't.

It has also been claimed that there may have been double counted ballots. No one can prove which ballots these are, and I am wondering why Coleman's camp assumes they were all for Franken. If they can show who the double votes were for, then remove them. If not, then something needs to be put in place to stop it from happening in the future, but you can't just throw random votes out without some assurance they were the double votes.

Brobkorb was also very holier-than-thou about Franken that he "doesn't want to count all of the votes." Nevermind that Coleman didn't want to count them all before the recount started (Franken should have waived the recount, remember?); he doesn't want to count them all now. There were 12,000 rejected absentee ballots. Coleman brought 650 to court. If he's so interested in every vote being counted, where were the rest? I'd like to see every legal vote counted, and would have no problem with all of the rejected ballots being re-evaluated. All of them. Not just the ones that might benefit a particular candidate.

I've also heard a lot of complaints because someone saw ballots with the circle filled in and and X through it that were counted for Franken but the same looking ballot was not counted for Coleman. If the entire ballot had a filled circle with an X through it, that's clear voter intent, unless you think the voter decided after filling out the ballot to not vote for anybody, but still submitted the ballot. On the other hand, if only one vote had an X through it, that's less clear. I would think without another filled circle in that race it should count, but the officials decided otherwise. That's not fraud. State Law says you must look at the voters intent. Looking at the whole ballot might show a pattern. A pattern shows intent, don't you think?

Here's a test: If I write the letter "C," and that C is the first letter of a word, tell me what sound the C makes. The correct answer is "I don't know, because it depends on the rest of the word." The same is true of voter intent. (By the way, the word is circumnavigate, and therefore it makes an "S" sound)

Now the right wants a run-off election. They didn't want that when Coleman was ahead. Conservatives attack Instant Run-off Voting because they think it will lead to Democratic victories in close races. Now they want to change the rules when they lost and immediately have a run-off election. I agree with run-offs. Michael, you've got some pull in the Republican party. Why not get them to change the law for the next election. But you can't do it for this one.

Again, Brodkorb is a paid Republican operative, and his side has been claiming election fraud since before the election. Republican Sarah Janacek came on the show and basically said Ritchie has done the best job he could. Yes, there have been problems in the election. Ritchie deserves some blame for these problems. Can you prove that Ritchie intentionally influenced the recount to favor Franken, rather than simply having run a poor recount? Can you prove that every problem you have brought up was not dealt with according to the best interpretation of state election law? If not, your accusations of cheating and fraud are crap.

In closing; I didn't vote for either candidate, Lizard People seems to have some good ideas on the economy and the DFL needs to drastically change how they choose their candidates in the future so they can avoid these problems in the future. I don't much care who the Republicans run.

Your Focus On The New Blogroll Stuff leader.

P.S. (Closed Circuit to Bruce: I hope you figured out the secret message)