Democrat Al Franken is currently basking in the glow of two important victories in his quest to unseat Republican Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate recount.
The state Canvassing Board has ruled that 1,500 incorrectly rejected absentee ballots should be included in the recount. The board also recommended using the machine recount results from election eve in a Franken-leaning Minneapolis precinct because 133 paper ballots disappeared during the hand recount. That decision could have cost Franken 46 votes if it had gone the other way. Franken, who trailed by 215 votes entering the recount, is now only down by 188 votes. Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer and former member of the Federal Election Commission, says there are inconsistencies in the application of state absentee ballot rules. "The Coleman campaign filed a lawsuit on Friday pointing out that different counties are applying the state rules differently, and that brings up the very same kind of basic equal protection problem that occurred in the Bush v. Gore case down in Florida [in 2000]," contends the Heritage Foundation scholar. "And if that is correct what the Coleman campaign is asserting, that is not the way you conduct an election -- and that certainly is not the way you conduct a recount. And it would be very unfair actually to both candidates for the state to do it that way." Von Spakovsky says if Minnesota election officials cannot find actual paper ballots cast on election night, they should not be including any machine recounts of missing ballots. He notes Minnesota is experiencing some of the many problems that can arise when you try to hand-recount three million ballots.
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