Minnesota court rules for Franken in Senate fight

Wednesday 01st July, 03:35 AM JST

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inkjet at 12:26 AM JST - 4th July

December 5, 2000 Web posted at: 1:56 a.m. EST (0656 GMT)

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- A Florida Court dealt a major blow Monday to Vice President Al Gore's legal efforts to challenge the results of Florida's presidential election.

Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls ruled that the evidence presented by Gore's legal team does not establish any gross negligence or fraud in the balloting process, or prove that alleged problems with the voting would have changed the outcome of the election.

i did not have sexual relations with that woman, i didn't inhale and i never challenged the results of the 2000 election.

ok i lied about the first two.
inkjet at 12:39 AM JST - 4th July

Bud, I'm asking for neither...

ok then if you feel comfortable that i'm not attacking you. explain then why it is you think gore did not challenge the results of the election? if you site evidence please don't let it be LFR's eloquent slap down.
yabits at 01:00 AM JST - 4th July

A Florida Court dealt a major blow Monday to Vice President Al Gore's legal efforts to challenge the results of Florida's presidential election.

Anyone dense or intellectually dishonest enough to believe that the above, stupidly-written sentence portrays reality deserves very little in the way of slack.

Gore could not be challenging "the results" of the "election" in Florida, because no human being could actually know what the results were until every legally-cast ballot (requested on a county-by-county basis, per Florida law) was physically examined by the most accurate means possible (i.e. human inspection) to determine the intent of the voter. It's called the democratic process and it had been followed in every close, contested election since the birth of the country -- until the Republicans found a way to get their pals in the state to subvert the process by stopping any and all physical inspection of ballots.

Any simpleton knows that when you are confronted with the results of machine-tabluated balloting that is as razor-close as Florida's presidential electors of 2000 and the Minnesota senatorial race of 2008, you hand count. It is only natural that anyone who loves democracy would resist any and all attempts to block the inspection and tallying of legally-cast ballots.

Republicans have to perpretrate the big lie that in American democracy the way to steal an election is by counting the ballots, and so counting ballots must be forestalled in any close election when a Republican is ahead.
jhk at 06:04 AM JST - 4th July

So the US has election accuracy problems, maybe there needs to be a regime change if Obama keeps bending over for Wall Street, selling out California, and wearing Bush's war panties. You guys are disgraceful and an embarrassment to your own people, if they haven't already started noticing.

I bet there is a higher likelihood of a regime change in the US than in Iran. You guys embarrass yourselves.
Taka313 at 06:13 AM JST - 4th July

Sez,

I really don't get the criticism of Minnesota or Minnesotans in this matter. Despite its rejection of reagan, Minnesota has always impressed me as a conservative state, conservative in the way that practices family values rather than just talking about them.

There's a good reason many Minnesotans are not a fan of reagan. First of all, Pres. Carter was good to family farmers, which make up a lot of Minnesota's rural population. And then in 1984, reagan ran against a Minnesotan. Of course he didn't carry the state. And if you mention reagan to a Minnesotan and they let you know that the man was an ass, it was because shortly after the election, reagan proposed putting nuclear waste sites in Minnesota. Fortunately, the idea was blocked by people (aided by young and vocal protesters :-) ) smart enough to realize burying nuclear waste in an area where most fresh water comes from underground springs was a bad idea. But hey, no one ever claimed reagan ever cared about the environment.

As for Minnesotans being conservative, I always assumed we were too. Hell, I always assumed I was conservative until I came to this site and found out that I'm an unwashed, hippy, baby killing, pot smoking, tree hugging traitor who has a man crush on saddam hussein and OBL.
Anyway, Minnesotans are VERY conservative. Just not politically. Considering that mining (which is heavily unionized) and family farms make up the majority of the state, I'm shocked that Minnesotans ever allowed the GOP to get a temporary hold on our state.

This was an incredibly close election and with the 60-vote figure staring the republicans in the face, there is little doubt in my mind that there was tremendous pressure on coleman to continue to contest the results. But if the 2009 Senate 60-vote issue was a matter of grave importance to the nation, so was the 2001 Presidency. It was time to put this to rest.

Here I have to disagree with you. Every day that normie continued with his temper tantrum was another day in which the world saw the republican party putting the party ahead of the people. Every.Single.Day.

The MN republicans wanted him to go away weeks ago. Considering tim pawlenty needed to break a campaign promise to keep his job, letting this fiasco continue further painted him in the same light.

I REALLY think that after a liberal group started a campaign to raise "norm dollars," and raised $185,000 for liberal candidates (people volunteered to give a dollar a day to liberal candidates until norm conceded; they're slogan was "a dollar a day to make norm go away), the GOP saw the writing on the wall.

Anyway, it's great that Minnesota is now fully represented again and it's even better that norm coleman is no longer sullying the seat once occupied by Sen. Wellstone.

Taka
inkjet at 08:14 AM JST - 4th July

Anyone dense or intellectually dishonest enough to believe that the above, stupidly-written sentence portrays reality deserves very little in the way of slack.

i have the solution. get cnn to print a retraction and i'll be glad to accept my error.
zurcronium at 10:27 AM JST - 4th July

Senator Franken. Sounds great. He really played out the republican stall tactics well by keeping composed and focused. He will be a the MN senator for a long, long time. The phants just better get use to it.
jhk at 02:11 PM JST - 4th July

Lets have a celebration for Franken. I really, honestly, hope and pray he can do something for you guys.

I guess he constitutes the better arm or a leg of the overall Frankenstein called the United States of America.

Get your "freedom" fighters out of Afghanistan, quit twittering about Iran, send Carter to North Korea again, or else at least give North Korea a chance to put California out of its misery, because Obama really doesn't seem to care about it, its really disappointing.
BeaverCleaver at 05:00 PM JST - 4th July

inkjet-"i have the solution. get cnn to print a retraction and i'll be glad to accept my error."

Your solution is a non-starter. I suggest learning how to read between the lines. The primary business of the media is not truth. Its making money. They invented spin primarily for that purpose, exaggerate and deceive for purposes of sales, not some liberal plot to control the nation.

If that was from CNN, its a perfect example of how they do thier best not to support a candidate, but rather, to inject as much drama as they can in a way the layman can understand even if it gives him the wrong idea. If you cannot read between the lines, then you need to slow your roll until you learn.
yabits at 09:12 PM JST - 4th July

If you cannot read between the lines, then you need to slow your roll until you learn.

LOL! Exactly.
LFRAgain at 01:03 AM JST - 5th July

inkjet,

" . . . in other words drag it out. i provided evidence he did.

Umm, actually, no. No, you didn't. In fact, you provided wholly inaccurate information, or as you casually painted it, "fuzzy" memories, and generally danced around every effort to point out your errors in each of your attempts to "prove" Gore dragged anything out, as opposed to Coleman.

Still, you seem to insist that challenging the results of an election and dragging out that challenge are one and the same thing. They aren’t. And it isn’t lost on anyone here that you are trying very, very, very hard to make it sound like that’s what you intended to say initially, when in fact, you were making a far different claim based on entirely false information.

Coleman dragged out a protracted legal battle to win, despite every indicator showing an ever-widening margin of defeat with every recount. Gore didn't. If ever the expression “quit while you’re behind” applied to a situation, it was Coleman’s. And considering how blatant your gaffs have been up to this point, complete with no small amount of backpedaling, it would almost certainly apply to your argument here as well. Show some testicular fortitude and just admit that you misspoke under mistaken assumptions. I promise won't hold it against you.

But let’s be clear about one thing here: I didn’t slap you down anywhere on this thread. You did that all by yourself.
zurcronium at 07:56 AM JST - 5th July

Latest is that Coleman is going to run for governor of South Carolina since there will soon be an opening in that state.

The republican love party, parties on.
BeaverCleaver at 07:03 PM JST - 6th July

Taka313 at 06:13 AM JST - 4th July

I never knew, or thought I would care to know, so much about politics in Minnesota. But that was a darn fine read. Thank you.
zurcronium at 04:04 AM JST - 7th July

Senator Franken is now in DC and will be sworn in soon. That last vote to get real healthcare reform, fairer taxes on the rich, no more stupid wars, rebuilding the country that is falling apart and digging out from the crushing bush debt starts today.

The republicants will assume their natural role as whining obstructionists looking out for the welfare of the lost and lonely looser crowd. That is when they are not in Argentina hiking.
motytrah at 12:55 AM JST - 8th July

My wife was a judge for the Recount. I know paid election workers who were in the Franken camp that did the election and the recount. The actual recount, including going over the ballets that had objections, was handled in under a month (weeks if you look at the actual amount of work time). The law is actually very specific about how to handle the recount.

The delay was purely because of the court procedure. The lawyers got very rich in this contest. And Coleman may be on the hook to pay a fair chunk of Franken's legal fees.

Franken is a flawed candidate. His own workers have said as much in private. But that doesn't take away the fact that he's not dumb and extremely shrewd. On the other hand Coleman was a democrat he switched sides to the republicans. So it's not like he's the second coming of St. Reagan.

From the standpoint on why Coleman lost the recount a lot of people think it's because of the people from the Republican Base (which came from around the nation to work the recount) were sub-par. One Franken worker described them to me as a bunch of "home schooled idiots" who got "way too emotional about every thing". As a result they were dropping the ball because they'd focus in on a single thing while the rest of the recount was passing by.