After the Warren debacle, I have a lot of reservations about Obama.

One way he can win back some of my support is by ending W's ban on stem cell research by the end of January (by the end of January 20 would be ideal).

And I don't want to see any finagling that accomplishes nothing. I don't want to see an executive order that say "stem research is okay, unless the theocrats object, in which case try extracting stem cells from your toenail clippings."

It certain is a petty viewpoint, but the absolute best thing about Franken in the Senate is how much it will chap the ass of Hannity and Limbaugh. Every liberal who ever engages either of those guys from now on must be ready to throw Franken in their face everytime they start shooting their mouths off, as in "If you're so smart, why don't you run for office? After all, Al Franken did it!"

Mike

With the new senate losing so many laughable members, I'm glad we're bringing in a comedian to take up the slack.

I am happy to see Al Franken headed to the Senate. But I would also like to have a rule that an election this close is considered a tie. I am not sure what we should do next. Perhaps a special run-off election, but I don't think our counting mechanism is accurate enough to really determine a difference of 40 something votes out of 2.8 million.
It most certainly wasn't in 2000.

I'm with Jessica. Thrilled to see a real liberal join the Senate. But I also want some closure on these ever-more-frequent 50-50% results. A runoff election (if legal) would work wonders, esp. in this case, since some third-party candidate got a sizable percentage of the vote.

a run off would yield results atypical of the whole set of voters in November. The simplest thign is: agree on the mechanism and if says you won, then you won. Sort of the same epistemologacil game we do with trials...we are not finding real guilt (or a real winner) just someone that met the definition we employed here.

orange

Does anyone else love the concept of a United States Senator whose body of work includes a book titled "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot"?

Jessica, I have to disagree with you. If we required a runoff election every time an election was close we would be spending millions of dollars to repeat races where a small, but more or less definitive, victory was determined. And a runoff is not necessarily a better way to go. Typically a special election draws much fewer people to the polls and reflects more of which side could convice more people to come back for seconds.

Let keep in mind, that even a victory of one vote is a victory. That's democracy. A recount like the one we are seeing in Minasota is the proper way to sort out a close result. In a bigger spread there is no need to go back and find the mistakes because there aren't enough of them to swing the election, but in a close one we check everything for accuracy.

That isn't a failure of the process. That is the process working as it should.

There are plenty of voting systems that don't require or allow interpretation. Minnesota needs to adopt one of them.

In other news, Bush has repealed the pardon for Isaac Toussie. The Whitehouse now claims they did not know about his father's political contribution. Yeah, right.

I agree with Independent Thinker big time, big enough to cause me to post my agreement.

Everything he says....re-counts are fine, this is how the system is designed to work....any fix to a new voting date disenfranchises many votes that won't make it back to a second round.

How is this more democratic? Fewer people electing a representative.

Run off is just a crazy idea.

Sorry.

Traveller

If we would ever wake up and do it Oregon's way, with all mail-in voting, we'd be able to get away from all the ridiculous antics of recounts like this, with missing ballots and people having them in their trunks and other such nonsense. I can't help but shake my head at the foolishness of our disjointed and nonsensical vote counting systems in this country. And no, I'm not from Oregon. But they've got this one right, and we all should take their lead and institute their system nationwide. And bury ES&S and Diebold under a mountain of returned voting machines.

> But I would also like to have a rule that an
> election this close is considered a tie. I am not
> sure what we should do next. Perhaps a special
> run-off election, but I don't think our counting
> mechanism is accurate enough to really determine a
> difference of 40 something votes out of 2.8
> million.

Agreed. Although I like Nevada's law: elections declared tied are settled with one hand of 5-card draw poker between the candidates.

Cranky

> I can't help but shake my head at the
> foolishness of our disjointed and nonsensical
> vote counting systems in this country.

Always the unshakable belief that a single huge perfect system is preferable to a multiplicity of ways of doing things acknowledged to be imperfect - as are all human endeavors - but harder to subvert due to their diversity and canceling out one another's errors.

In agriculture the desire to plant one and only one be-all-and-end-all crop is known as monoculture, and is now generally thought to be a bad thing. In systems engineering there is a rule of thumb that is almost an 11th Commandment: There are no perfect systems; attempts to create the One Perfect System will make the problem worse.

Cranky

What do you do when the runoff election is 50-50, too?

There are no perfect systems

Some are better than others. Filling in circles is obviously not the best, and mailing them in would have only made the problem worse, as the absentee ballots in Minnesota prove.

Here in WV we have touch screen with a paper trail on the side. You can change a vote before finalizing it. The computer shows you at the end who you are voting for, and you can correct it. And you can look at the paper trail to see if it agrees with the screen. It also tells you if there is an office you didn't vote for, which you can either accept or go back and correct. But you can't overvote. And best of all, there are no two ways to interpret a vote.

What's this about "allegations of double-counted votes"? As much as I think Franken would be cool, I don't want to see anyone get double counted votes (not that allegations have to be true, just want to think AF got it fair and square.)

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that this is a three-way race, with the Independence Party candidate taking about 15% of the vote. What is really needed for circumstances like this is an Instant-runoff type ballot so that all the voters have a voice in the final results.

What's this about "allegations of double-counted votes"? As much as I think Franken would be cool, I don't want to see anyone get double counted votes

Just single-read the story and you'll have your answer. It's not what you're assuming it is.

I'd like to see Franken win. We could use his help.

And for those who would like to abolish the electoral college and have a single national election for president, imagine recounting the entire country. It would happen.

That's not to say we shouldn't change the current system...just be careful what you wish for.

There are plenty of voting systems that don't require or allow interpretation. Minnesota needs to adopt one of them.

We have a fine system here in Minnesota. There were 2.9 million ballots cast. Going through them one by one ended up with about 1500 that were ultimately challenged by either party. In most of those challenges, the Review board upheld the election judge. There are another perhaps 1600 absentee ballots that were wrongfully not counted but will be examined by the Review board and the campaigns.

So that's roughly 3,000 out of 3,000,000 that caused a fuss, 0.1%. I don't think any system is going to be much more accurate than that. And I'd like to see how some touch screen system holds up in a race that is as close as 47 votes out of 2.9 million.

The way the recount has proceeded in Minnesota is a potent argue in favor of recounts. The problem in 2000 was that Florida didn't do a comprehensive recount; if they had, the results could have been much different (though they still wouldn't have been able to compensate for butterfly ballot and the Jews for Buchanan phenomenon).

A runoff is unnecessary and pointless. It is much, much easier to do a full recount than to do another election. And a recount properly done can discern the results at a fine enough grain in most cases.

K: "After the Warren debacle, I have a lot of reservations about Obama. ... And I don't want to see any finagling that accomplishes nothing."

"Debacle"? Oh, puh-leeze!!!

Dah-ling, be a dear and do try in the future to spare us such over-the-top drama queen hysterics and demands.

Rick Warren was only tapped for the inaugural invocation. It's not like he's been nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services, or -- (gasp!) Mon Dieu! -- Ambassador to the Vatican. It's more kerfluffle than debacle, and that misguided preacher's certainly not worth any energy expended with such pretentious displays of moral outrage.

If my partner and I and most of our queer friends here in San Francisco's "Gay Ghetto" can live with Barack Obama's choice without channeling Margo Channing in All About Eve, so can you.

jessica: "... I don't think our counting mechanism is accurate enough to really determine a difference of 40 something votes out of 2.8 million. It most certainly wasn't in 2000."

That's because there was no re-count in 2000. The Republicans in Florida shut it down and then the Supreme Court allowed them to run out the clock before it could ever get fairly started.

We have a fine system here in Minnesota. - tomeck

Actually there were more like 6000 regular ballots challenges, though I assume your argument is that most of these challenges were withdrawn, and therefore not "ultimately challenged". Of the 1600 absentee ballots, it's debatable how many were improperly excluded. But that's the problem. In a close race, there is enough controversy to question the results. A WV style touch screen (w/paper trail) election still could leave absentee ballot controversies, but the actual computer votes would be easily verified, with no interpretation - no lizard people, no dots or "X"s instead of filled in ovals, etc.

I hope Coleman wins but by a margin just small enough for Franken to claim ambiguity and appeal to the US Senate. Then I hope the Senate appoints Franken by a party-line vote. Just like the Supreme Court did in 2000, except that this time they'll be appointing a PROFESSIONAL, TALENTED clown.

what a wonderful christmas present!

Lord I hate that twerp. I have no use for Republicans, at least not in their current Neocon incarnation; and I know virtually nothing about Coleman. But Franken is such a loathsome little piss-ant flack.

Jessica, don't compare the orderly and systematic recount in Minnesota with the debacle in Florida If Florida had had an orderly procedure like Minnesota's in place we would be saying goodbye to president Gore instead of the thief

The Minnesota recount was fine. It was slow because there was no reason to hurry, and it was boring because it wasn't an entertainment event.

There will never be a foolproof method of settling an election as close as this one. Minnesota's method was as good as any and was executed wonderfully.

"Voter intent" is used as the definitive final test when looking at some uncertain ballots. There are other prior tests. The alternative would be to try to specify every kind of possible problem with a ballot, the inevitable result of which would be to disallow or allow ballots whose intent was clear. The legal and philosophical arguments about the impossibility of divining intent are mostly self-serving and quibbly. You're always going to have judgement calls.

Franken haters can go fuck themselves. Most of them don't realize that Stuart Smalley was a fictional character.

Looks like big egos v. Mr. Obnoxious in the Senate. Should be fun.

If the Minnesota recount seemed slow it was only because they were being careful to count each vote carefully. Good for them. I'm happy they are taking their time to do it right.

I hope Al Franken comes out the winner. He is a decent human being and a great wit on top of that.

This brings to mind that engineering adage "Do you want it fast or do you want it right?"