The Coleman-Franken Recount Trainwreck?
Thursday, January 15th, 2009Most political junkies here in Minnesota initially had positive reactions to the physical recount in the Coleman-Franken race. Later, they started thinking of it as the battle over who could question the validity of their opponent’s votes. Still later, they saw the inconsistencies in the Canvassing Board’s rulings. Now we’re heading for the election contest phase. Michael Stokes Paulsen has written an op-ed in this morning’s WSJ in which he says that the recount isn’t constitutional. Here’s his explanation why it isn’t constitutional:
This is Florida 2000 all over again, but with colder weather. Like that fiasco, Minnesota’s muck of a process violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, the controlling Supreme Court decision is none other than Bush v. Gore.
Remember Florida? Local officials conducting recounts could not decide what counted as a legal vote. Hanging chads? Dimpled chads? Should “undervotes” count (where a machine failed to read an incompletely-punched card)? What about “overvotes” (where voters punched more than one hole)? Different counties used different standards; different precincts within counties were inconsistent.
The Florida Supreme Court intervened and made things worse, ordering a statewide recount of some types of rejected ballots but not others. It specified no standards for what should count as a valid vote, leaving the judgment to each county. And it ordered partial recounts already conducted in some counties (but not others) included in the final tabulation. The result was chaos. (more…)