Until now, Minnesota was always famous for its clean elections. Indeed,
Democratic consultant Bob Beckel recently attested to the honesty of
Minnesota's elections, joking: "Believe me. I've tried. I've tried
every way around the system out there, and it doesn't work."
But that was before Minnesota encountered the pushiest, most
aggressive, most unscrupulous person who has ever sought public office,
Al Franken.
On Election Day, Franken lost the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota to the
Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by 725 votes. But over the next
week, Democratic counties keep discovering new votes for Franken and
subtracting votes from Coleman, claiming to be correcting "typos."
In all, Franken picked up 459 votes and Coleman lost 60 votes from these alleged "corrections."
As the inestimable economist John Lott pointed out, the "corrections"
in the Senate race generated more new votes for Franken than all the
votes added by corrections in every race in the entire state --
presidential, congressional, state house, sanitation commissioner and
dogcatcher -- combined.
And yet the left-wing, George Soros-backed Secretary of State, Mark
Ritchie, stoutly defended the statistically impossible "corrected"
votes. There's something fishy going on in Minnesota besides the annual
bigmouth bass tournament.
Fortunately, the very outrageousness of the "corrections" scam brought
national attention to the Minnesota recount, at which point it became
more difficult to keep "finding" votes for Franken. Under the glare of
the national media, the steady accretion of post-election ballots for
Franken came to a screeching halt, rather like a child who, after being
caught red-handed, tactfully removes his hand from the cookie jar.
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, sunlight is the best
disinfectant. (Although, having met Franken, I would add that actual
disinfectant might not be a bad idea either.)
Since then, the state has been conducting a meticulous hand recount
and, despite a suspicious delay from liberal Hennepin County and a
suspicious late-vote discovery from liberal Ramsey County, Coleman has
consistently held a lead of 200 to 300 votes. (That's not including the
519 votes that were stolen -- or "corrected" -- from Coleman
immediately after the election when no one was paying attention.)
As of Wednesday, with 93 percent of the votes recounted, Coleman holds
a 295-vote lead. At no point since the first count after the election
has Franken been ahead.
The famously honest people of Minnesota probably think this means the
recount is almost over. But like a bad Al Franken sketch on "Saturday
Night Live," I predict this recount will keep going on and on and on
for no apparent reason.
To understand what is happening in Minnesota, one must turn to the Washington state gubernatorial election of 2004.
As in Minnesota this year, the Republican candidate kept winning and
winning, but the Democrats refused to concede, instead demanding
endless recounts. Meanwhile, Democratic precincts kept "discovering"
new ballots for the Democrat, Chris Gregoire.
Six days after the election on Nov. 10, 2004, Republican Dino Rossi was
ahead by 3,492 votes. But five days later, heavily Democratic King
County election officials actually claimed to "find" 10,000 uncounted
ballots! And they favored Gregoire!
Nonetheless, after a full recount, Rossi was still ahead, but this time by only 42 votes.
So the Democrats demanded a third recount -- and King County continued
its miraculous ballot-"finding" trick, which continued to favor
Gregoire.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Democrat election officials were
"finding" new votes as much as they needed to find new votes. Here are
10,000 new votes. You need more? OK, back to work!
Eventually, King County found enough provisional and absentee ballots
to put Democrat Gregoire in the lead -- and this result was immediately
certified by the weenie Republican secretary of state.
Republicans are always accused of being sharks; I wish they'd rise to the level of minnows.
According to Michael Barone, an examination of King County records
showed that nearly 2,000 more mail-in ballots had been "cast" in King
County than had been requested.
But Gregoire got to be governor -- having done unusually well among the imaginary voters of King County.
The head of the Washington State Democratic Party orchestrating this
ballot theft was Paul Berendt. Guess who is advising Al Franken on the
Minnesota recount right now? That's right: Paul Berendt.
Get ready, good people of Minnesota: You have no idea what is about to
hit you. And, per usual, the Republicans clearly haven't the vaguest
notion what is about to hit them.
Just this week, liberal Ramsey County "discovered" 171 new votes from a
single voting machine in a single precinct. An analysis by John Lott
shows that these newly "discovered" votes represent yet another
statistical improbability that favors Franken: Despite the fact that
Maplewood precinct No. 6 gave Franken only 45.4 percent of the
original, untampered-with vote, the newly "discovered" votes gave
Franken 53.2 percent of the vote.
Also, you will notice that Franken is obsessively fixated on the
absentee ballots, a specialty of the vote fraud experts at ACORN.
Inasmuch as only 5 percent of absentee ballots were rejected in
Minnesota, Franken already has fraud baked into the cake. But he needs
more.
He is demanding to be given the names of voters whose absentee ballots
were rejected. Why would he need the names of the voters? Unless ... he
plans to track them down, determine how they voted and then ferociously
fight to qualify the absentee ballots only of known Franken voters.
Franken can pretend to be generous -- by not demanding that all
rejected absentee ballots be counted -- while in fact being
manipulative -- by requesting that only the ballots with votes for him
be counted. That's exactly what the Democrats -- led by Franken adviser
Berendt -- did to steal the 2004 election in Washington state.
But first, Franken will need the names. Then he can check voter
registration lists, ask around or, in a really aggressive move, call
the rejected voters directly and bully them into admitting who they
voted for. If they say "Coleman," I promise you they won't get a call
back to ensure that "every vote is counted."
There is absolutely no other reason to get the names of those whose ballots were rejected.
We'll find out in the next few weeks if Barack Obama's "new politics of
hope and change" includes turning the cleanest state in the union into
one of the dirtiest.
