Saturday, November 08, 2008

Minnesota Recount Chicanery Starts Soon

Recounts are just so ugly. Here in Washington, State our "recount" crisis during the Governor race just a few years ago, ended in chicanery and a lot of meddling by both parties to incluence the recount.

Now Minnesota is about to have their own recount debacle, this one over a senatorial seat.

Let me be clear: I loathe Al Franken.

I've listened to his radio show, I read his book and he's a jerk. He hides behind the "satire" to say irresponsible things about his opponents, or indeed anyone who dares contradict his narrow point of view. He's the kind of liberal, many of us independents loathe, because he's more focused on demonizing the other side of the political spectrum, than he is about offering solutions, researching facts, or providing real leadership.

His opponent in Minnesota is a very weak counter-proposal to be honest, and really the independent candidate that is running in this race, would have probably received my vote.

However, despite all this, Franken is right, in that he deserves to have the ballots recounted. In fact, he doesn't just deserve it, the law demands he gets a recount. So on this issue, Franken and I agree.

My only word of warning is, watch how quickly the recount is politicized, and watch how much the recount skews the current totals. Recounts are a huge mess, and all kinds of tricks and games come into play, and both the left and right make no apologies in warping, skewing and altering the final totals for their cause.

When a recount triggers, I wonder if it would behoove us all, to simply have an entirely new vote instead? Perhaps, the candidate list should be trimmed to the top 2, so that those who voted for the third and fourth candidates are now forced to choose, similar to the "run off" vote that Georgia will go through in a few weeks.

This would seem to me, to be a more fair way to resolving a race this tight, otherwise ballots suddenly go missing, or suddenly appear (as they have already), or suddenly polling officials claim they "mistyped" their results; and what we get is more about legal manuevering and tricks, than actually determining who the people voted for.

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