Brad Friedman Byon 7/1/2009, 10:05pm PT

Please check out my editorial in response to the Franken election, as published at the UK's Guardian yesterday just after the MN Supreme Court verdict. Here's a taste...

When ballots are counted in secret (or, in many cases, not counted at all), democracy is dangerously imperiled. Lucky for Minnesotans, that wasn't the case up there, even if it meant some eight months without proper representation in the US Congress. It was worth the wait. Transparency was no match for the conspiracy theorists, including the RSCC, the head of the Republican party and even the Republican National Lawyers Association, who embarrassingly joined the black helicopter crowd in touting evidence-free claims of Franken's "efforts to steal a seat in the United States Senate."

...

When democracy is visible to all, it works. When it becomes buried behind secrecy, insider tabulations and computerized black boxes, the very basis of our system of government is put dangerously at stake. Transparency wins again. Along with the voters of Minnesota. Nice to see the voters win one for a change.

Check out the whole thing, if only for some of the whacky comments posted by some of the wingnut dead-enders over there. One of them, "MikeMichigan" wrote in response to my piece, channeling every nutball with a primetime show over in Crazy Land (aka Fox "News")...

Oh, and Franken stole the election. The recount was a sham. Coleman was almost 800 votes ahead before the democrat lawyers got involved and started manufacturing votes for Franken and eliminating legal votes for Coleman.

To which I was happy to reply...with some handy info from MN Supremes decision yesterday, as helpfully highlighted today by Media Matters:

The 5 to 0 unanimous ruling of the bi-partisan Minnesota Supreme Court noted "[n]o claim of fraud in the election or during the recount was made by either party" and that "Coleman's counsel confirmed at oral argument that Coleman makes no claim of fraud on the part of either voters or election officials." Other than that, yeah, "Franken stole the election," but apparently the Republicans forgot to mention any of that, or present any evidence whatsoever for it in their 8 month long contest. Enjoy your lonely world, MichiganMike...

Good times...

And, oh, yeah, I was also able to point out in the article that of the more than 42,000 voters registered in MN alone by ACORN last year, not a single instance of "voter fraud" was noted by the Coleman/GOP team in their 8-month long election contest and court case. "With all the claims of voter fraud being committed by the group," I noted, "surely this election, of all elections, would be where evidence of all that fraud would finally be revealed for all to see, no? Um, no. Apparently not."



