The several thousand University of Wisconsin students from the state’s western neighbor, Minnesota, returned home over Christmas break to tired breakfast table headlines detailing the latest gossip in our Senate recount.
It’s not really exciting stuff, is it? Well, maybe. What Midwest state could boast a battle between two New Yorkers? One’s a Bush-era Republican who celebrated his birthday at Woodstock in 1969, the other, a Democrat who played Stuart Smalley and penned tomes such as “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” and “Why Not Me?”, a book in which he fictionalizes his personal campaign for president on the sole platform of being against ATM fees. You can at least say these guys have chutzpah. It could have been a battle between dull, graying white guys.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Chief Justice Erik Magnusson have done as good of a job as anybody heading the state Canvassing Board charged with overseeing the hand tally. It was a thankless task, and the state can be proud a bipartisan committee performed in such a professional, transparent manner. Any person could evaluate every contested ballot and watch the Canvassing Board do its tedious business online. And, with both campaigns observing the recount, there is disagreement over only several hundred out of the several million hand-counted ballots.
There is one wrinkle. A controversial Supreme Court decision blatantly disenfranchised voters, allowing the campaigns to agree together on which wrongly disqualified ballots to accept, basically letting the parties agree on which of these votes to count. Both camps have changed tact on the court’s opinion at politically convenient times. Commenting on the announcement of the decision, a Coleman attorney declared, “The court actually endorsed our view.” Now the Republican’s campaign feels cheated because they obviously didn’t agree to count the “right” ballots.
Both campaigns were probably cheated — out of their money, that is. The Republican and Democratic campaigns combined spent more than $36 million, or $15 per vote. Independent party candidate and electoral spoiler Dean Barkley, who garnered around 15 percent at the polls, spent about 13 cents for each of his votes.
Some newspaper columnists from the Iron Range down to Winona rushed to call the entire process an embarrassment. The East Coast newspaper giants have also weighed in. The Wall Street Journal tried to tally how Franken had benefited from “inconsistencies” and only succeeded in proving the election was a dead heat — a fact we already knew. Their position has been consistently childish. Edward Cleary, free speech advocate and one of five canvassing judges, wrote to their editor that “one can only assume, based on the tone of the editorial, and the over-the-top slam at Franken, that had Coleman come out on top in this recount, the members of the board would have been praised as ‘strong-willed, intelligent and perceptive.'”
A New York Times editorial implored a coin-flip as the ultimate solution — as is mandated by the state constitution — considering the margin of victory is statistically insignificant. That would leave everyone more distraught over the “democratic process” than even an inevitable court decision. Should this election be decided in the courts, Franken looks ready to prevail. However, the process could take months to resolve. Perhaps the fairest option would be a second, run-off style election. There are already rumblings amid the state Legislature to make this happen in future elections. This is not unprecedented. In 1974, New Hampshire was forced by the U.S. Senate to conduct a reelection when bickering between the two parties could not produce a sufficiently legitimate result. The voters came out in droves for the ’75 redo. Of course, in Minnesota, they would still have to pick between either Coleman or Franken — the epitome of the turd sandwich/giant douche dilemma. Every aspect of the struggle for the “people’s will” is clouded by what is at stake. The Republicans are trying desperately to salvage what they can from a sound drubbing in this past election cycle, while the Democrats are looking to further cement their majority. Caught in the middle of this political tug-of-war are the people of Minnesota. We can only hope their voices are not lost in the ruckus.
James Sonneman ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.
