Election Night 2004 saw Republican Dino Rossi emerge victorious in the Washington State gubernatorial election against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Yet when the time came to take the oath of office, Christine Gregoire stood at the podium with her right hand up.

Four years later, Election Night 2008 and it was Republican Norm Coleman with the highest number of votes against Al Franken in the race for the Senate. Yet today, Norm Coleman is a private citizen and Al Franken is a United States Senator representing the state of Minnesota in Washington DC.

I’m going to avoid rehashing the blatant fraud and larceny perpetrated by the Democratic machine in King County in the 2004 race and focus instead on the more recent case of Norm Coleman.

There is not much of a need to recap in full the very worst case of out and out election theft in decades, perpetrated by the Minnesota Secretary of State in open collusion with the Franken campaign, the liberal Democrats and Fifth Column Republicans (hereafter known as “Scuzzies” - in (dis)honor of fake Republican DeDe Scozzafava) more concerned with appearing “bipartisan” to the media than protecting the votes of the people of Minnesota on the so-called “bipartisan” canvassing board that conducted the “recount.”

Suffice it to say; can there be any doubt that the fix was in when the ballot below qualified as a vote for Al Franken;

… but this (below) “strangely” did not qualify as a vote for Norm Coleman?

PS: The above episode was brought to you courtesy of the Soros funded SOS (Secretaries of State) Project; the aim of which to get individuals who have sworn to actively slant the process, lie, cheat and steal to ensure that Democrats win elections whether or not they actually get the higher number of votes (like Minnesota SOS Mark Ritchie, a direct beneficiary) elected to state Secretary of State positions (in charge of conducting elections) around the country.

Handsomely paid off in Minnesota, didn’t it?

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According to the New York Times, labor leaders are turning to the ‘Plan B’ that has been speculated on for months. Faced with the prospect of trying to get swing-state Democrat Senators to vote for a radioactive bill, they have thrown in the towel on the best-known part of ‘Card Check’ - the part that gives the bill its name:

A half-dozen senators friendly to labor have decided to drop a central provision of a bill that would have made it easier to organize workers.

The so-called card-check provision — which senators decided to scrap to help secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes — would have required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union. Currently, employers can insist on a secret-ballot election, a higher hurdle for unions.

The abandonment of card check was another example of the power of moderate Democrats to constrain their party’s more liberal legislative efforts. Though the Democrats have a 60-40 vote advantage in the Senate, and President Obama supports the measure, several moderate Democrats opposed the card-check provision as undemocratic.

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[UPDATE]: Coleman has conceded.  And while I rarely agree with the Angry Left on anything, I do agree on this: Reid has no more excuses.

For the Minnesota Supreme Court decision declaring Al Franken the winner, that is.

Real fast: the ABC News report that was sent out is actually from January; apparently the Governor was not specifically ordered to issue the certificate (don’t ask me why); Gov. Pawlenty made one of those statements:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty had indicated as late as Monday that he was willing to certify Mr. Franken as the winner once the state’s highest court decided the recount and Mr. Coleman’s battle. On CNN on Sunday, Mr. Pawlenty said: “I’m prepared to sign it as soon as they give the green light.”

Asked what he would do if Mr. Coleman decided to appeal to the federal courts, as had been mentioned before this ruling, Mr. Pawlenty added: “A federal court could stay or put a limit on or stop the effect of the state court ruling. If they chose, if they do that, I would certainly follow their direction. But if that doesn’t happen promptly or drags out for any period of time, then we need to move ahead with signing this, particularly if I’m ordered to do that by the state court.”

Some legal experts already are pointing out that the Minnesota Supreme Court did not issue a directive ordering Governor Pawlenty to sign the certificate. And there is, according to legal experts, a rehearing period of 10 days, under the Minnesota judges’ ruling.

And so we wait to see what Norm Coleman does next. Hotline says it’ll be to concede: either way, it’ll be at 4 PM.

A review of Minnesota’s statewide database of registered voters revealed at least 2,812 deceased individuals voted in last November’s general election, according to a new report by the “traditional values” advocacy group Minnesota Majority.

After obtaining the list of voters who participated in November’s election, the group hired an independent firm who specializes in “death suppression” for direct mailing lists to review the data. The process, which involved matching names and addresses to state death records, bore troubling results.

According to Minnesota statute 201.13, the commissioner of health is to report monthly the name, address, date of birth, and county of residence of voting-age deceased residents to the secretary of state.

Presumably the commissioner of health would not issue incomplete reports (read: no motive), the blame then falls elsewhere – namely, at the feet of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, whose partisan leanings and curious alliance with vote fraud-magnet ACORN are becoming more salient by the day.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann argues the discrepancies unearthed by the group are merely the result of election workers updating the voter database with faulty information and were not instance of voter fraud.

“I would venture—put my reputation on—the fact that there are very few, if any, people impersonating dead people. You’re going to have human error,” he admitted.

But Jeff Davis, president of Minnesota Majority, believes the situation to be far less benign – and legal – than the Ritchie’s staff is willing to admit.

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Edward Foley, a professor of election law at Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University, reviews Norm Coleman’s appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court in the Senate race there. One of the things that struck me about this recount is that the issues are so enormously complex. No one was able to describe the problems in a concise enough form to really wrap my brain around it. Foley’s analysis confirms my instinct, noting in particular all the complicated state issues, and notes that  this complexity raises broader legitimacy questions for whatever happens. Furthermore, these state problems mean that there is a good chance that the Minnesota Supreme Court could remand the case to a lower court before any of the federal courts are even considered.

Anyways, the problems:

These state law issues, regrettably, are not straightforward. Indeed, as I’ve mulled them over since Coleman filed his brief last Thursday, at times I’ve found them mind-numbingly complex, and I’m someone who specializes in election law and has followed this vote-counting dispute from the beginning (meaning since Election Day, last November 4). It worries me that legal questions concerning the resolution of disputed important elections can be so complicated, since I consider it an important value in a democracy that the rules for resolving these disputes be publicly accessible and understandable. But the situation is what it is, and thus all I can do as a specialist in this field is to lay out the issues as best as I can, clarifying or illuminating them when possible.

This complexity is particularly problematic in the context of Minnesota Secretary of State’s claim, “…recounts are for really the loser to understand and see and then believe that they in fact did not win the election and for their supporters to come to the same conclusion.”

After the jump, we talk through some of the sample problems that occur in counting absentee ballots.

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Earlier in the week, I noted that the Democratic strategy with respect to the Minnesota Senate recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken is to demand that Franken be seated if the state courts rule in his favor. Chuck Schumer was saying it, while the academics on the left were laying out the argument that the federal courts wouldn’t take it.

But there is a fly in the ointment. The Chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (that’s what they call Democrats up there) seems to think that Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty is right on this and Chuck Schumer is wrong. Here he is on video saying that if the federal courts intervene, Governor Pawlenty can’t issue a certificate of election, which Harry Reid demands for seating. Or at least did when the duly appointed Roland Burris was up.

Chucky and Harry foiled again.

H/T The Hill.

Everything in Congress hangs on 60 votes in the Senate. Right now, the Democrats have 57 Senators plus Joe Lieberman. They could get one more if the Minnesota recount in the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is decided in their favor. It is beginning to appear that the Democrats are settling on a strategy of attempting to seat Franken after the state courts decide, regardless of where the underlying issues stand.

For example, check out this quote from Chuck Schumer in The Hill:

“We believe the law of Minnesota requires a candidate to be certified after all the state appeals are through, whether someone applies to the federal court or not,” said Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

While Republicans are talking about this going to the Supreme Court, Democrats are playing that down. On Friday, Richard Hasen, who normally writes the excellent and critical Election Law Blog, argued at the blog of the American Constitution Society that SCOTUS wouldn’t be likely to take the case. At dinner on Saturday night with a bunch of Democratic staffers and operatives, they all sang from this playbook.

This strategy seems calculated to avoid the hard question in this case.

Ben Ginsburg, Coleman’s attorney, asks this question at Redstate:

Does the law allow not counting one vote when others just like it were counted by other counties and cities? Should a person’s vote count depending solely on where he or she lives? Should a contest court disallow votes based on counting rules it adopts but which no Minnesota county or city used on Election Day? Is it right to disallow a vote because the Minnesota Secretary of State’s database wasn’t up-to-date about whether the absentee voter or their witness were really registered?

If the Democrats move forward on trying to seat Franken before the whole process winds down, they will be, in essence, short-circuiting the judgement of the court with “yes” answers to all these questions. Ultimately, the fundamental question that Democratic Senators will be voting that votes don’t have to be treated the same everywhere.

They will be asserting that these kinds of facts should have no impact:

These voters remain disenfranchised because the Court changed the rules of the game on Friday, February 13th – long after the Election Day votes had been counted. Two and a half weeks into the trial and again yesterday, the court announced it would apply a “strict compliance” standard to judging the 11,000 unopened absentee ballots. That stands in contrast to the evidence at trial which showed that on Election Day, Minnesota’s counties and cities permitted ballots that “substantially complied” with the state’s laws to be counted. Altering the Election Day standard meant that thousands of ballots that would have been allowed on Election Day in most counties are now disallowed by the contest court

Does the law allow not counting one vote when others just like it were counted by other counties and cities? Should a person’s vote count depending solely on where he or she lives? Should a contest court disallow votes based on counting rules it adopts but which no Minnesota county or city used on Election Day? Is it right to disallow a vote because the Minnesota Secretary of State’s database wasn’t up-to-date about whether the absentee voter or their witness were really registered?

Is Minnesota a state that seeks to disenfranchise voters, or to count all the legal votes?

That’s why yesterday’s three-judge contest court ruling is so wrong, and why we will appeal.

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Harry Reid has caved. He had suggested the Senate would seat Al Franken provisionally. Reid has, as of yesterday, changed his tune.

He said he was under the impression that a ruling would come down in the next two weeks, at which point he would decide whether the former comedian should become the 59th Senate Democrat.

“We have to let the trial get over with, that should be over in two weeks,” Reid told reporters.

Of course, the real reason is that the Minnesota court’s decision to count additional ballots winds up helping Coleman — and everybody knows it.

Promoted from the diaries by Erick.

What you are about to read is how one of the attorneys working for the Franken campaign tried to eliminate a legally cast absentee ballot because it was a vote for Sen. Coleman. What you are about to read is a firsthand report from the man who witnessed this play out right in front of him. Sit down and read Chris Tiedeman’s account of an eventful episode in the recount process. Just be prepared to get very, very angry.

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Where is Al Franken? He claims to have won an election in Minnesota.

But that’s not what a local reporter says. Al has been spotted in Florida:

Make that since anyone in Minnesota has seen Franken. That was the day he proclaimed victory after the Canvassing Board certified his 225-vote win. He took no questions after his brief statement, only to disappear behind the façade of his downtown Minneapolis townhome. Since then we have been told he has been hanging out in Florida while the rest of us, pardon my French, have been freezing our butts off.

When pushed, the Franken campaign said that he came up to DC for an interview:

UPDATE: The Franken Campaign says Franken has been accessible, they say Franken sat down for interviews with both the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press in Washington D.C. a week and a half ago.