St. Paul, MN – The state Canvassing Board’s ballot rulings today in the U.S. Senate race has unofficially put challenger Al Franken in the lead by more than 250
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The intense scrutiny of “voter intent” resumed this morning by the five-member board charged with directing Minnesota’s recount in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic rival Al Franken, and the first 90 minutes of ballot rulings turned the challenger’s slight deficit into a growing triple-digit lead.
Also this morning, the State Canvassing Board sidestepped the Coleman team’s proposal to prevent as many as 150 ballots from being counted twice. Talking about instances when a ballot couldn’t be run through a voting machine, requiring a duplicate to be made, the Coleman camp said that such ballots should be counted only if an original could be matched with its copy.
However, board members today ruled that the duplicates should not be addressed by the board but in “another forum,” said Board Chairman Mark Ritchie. But it will consider the ballots if there are questions about the intent of the voters who cast them, the board said.
Later in the morning, Coleman officials requested that the state Supreme Court prevent the Canvassing Board from including these votes in its recount totals.
In response to the Coleman request, Franken spokesman Andy Barr said: “This is just the latest desperate act by a campaign panicked because it has suddenly realized that it is going to lose the election.”
On Thursday, the board reviewed Coleman’s challenges of hundreds of Election Day ballots, and the day’s work saw the unofficial margin between the candidates dwindle to within a handful of votes.
Then, as the board took up and rejected more Coleman challenges today, Franken pulled ahead in the opening minutes and steadily built his advantage beyond 250 by midday.
Another stolen election… the Democrats have been doing this for years. They could have gotten away with it in 2000, had Al Gore won his own state.
This is open and notorious theft of an election; the idea that a second party can deternime someones INTENT is absurd.
This is exactly like the Soviet Union did – you could vote for the opposition but your vote didn’t count because you intended to vote for the party leader.
Gore tried this and lost – and Franken should loose too – otherwise we can never trust any election.
Voting for President in the USA is a farce anyway because of the electoral coolege.
oh please. 2 jewish democrats duking it out in a very close racwe. nobody stole nothing (and coleman who switched parties was only a rino in the first place)
Murray, its not a farce in every state. Only in states such as ny and california where the outcome is predetermined……
I 217;ll answer your question #8 , but I want to address a few other points raised by others.
2000  211; Bush won every recount. If it was still a tie, it would have gone to the House, per the Constitution. The House was controlled by the GOP, so Bush would have won anyway. Regardless, it 217;s over. But I will say this, ever since then the Democrats have focused a lot of their campaign money on winning secretary of state races in the various states. This why you some who willa dd legitimacy to ACORN 217;s fraud  211; park benches as legal addresses, etc.
Blaming Nader is ridiculous. By that logic, Bill Clinton never won a majority of votes because of Ross Perot. Third party candidates are a part of life. Get over it.
The electoral college was brilliant planning by the founders. Besides we are not a true democracy. We a democratically elected republic. Back to the EC 230; It forces candidates to campaign in all states. If we went exclusively by popular vote, national elections would be decided by California, NY, NJ and MA. Those overwhemingly liberal states would cancel out FL & TX  211; although BHO took FL this time around. So that means all the the people in the middle of the country would have no real say on the national level.
Back to your proof of stolen elections.
In 1974, Republican Louis Wyman won his race for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. He won by 335 votes and after a few recounts, he was finally certified by the New Hampshire secretary of state. The overwhelmingly Democratic U.S. Senate refused to seat Wyman, despite New Hampshire 217;s certification of Wyman as the winner of the election. The U.S. Senate spent months examining disputed ballots from the New Hampshire election. Unable to come up with a method to declare the Democrat the winner that didn 217;t require a guillotine, the Senate forced New Hampshire to hold another election.
This time Wyman lost. This was an abuse of power. New Hampshire had certified a winner of its Senate election, but it was a Republican, so the Democratic Senate simply ordered a new election.
Richard McIntyre, a Republican who was running against a Democrat incumbent for a House seat in 1984, had a similar thing happen to him.
In 2004, there a case of this with the Governor race in Washington State. The Republican won the race on election night, but ballots favoring the Democrat kept being  220;discovered 221; until the Democrat finally eked out a majority. At that point, the recount was immediately halted and the Democrat declared the victor.
But I know some folks have never gotten past 2000, and that 217;s why we have Bush derangement syndrome. Personally, I am so disappointed how he ended his presidency.
Franken is just another liberal clown (literally) with no experience. It’s a joke. But I guess I cannot expect much from a state the elected a professional wrestler as its governor.
The lucky guy wins either way! Either he becomes senator, or if he loses the recount
he has enough comedy material tp last the rest of his career.
#4 every organization that was involved in any form of recount including the NY times concluded that Bush won Florida. Check the sources, The only ones that still repeat the ignorant mantra regarding a stolen 2000 election are dems that like to fire up the masses that work on emotion rather than facts.
I’m going to go with my gut instinct on this one. The crooks stole the election by “stuffing the ballot boxes” again and again, until they got the results they wanted.