Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds
The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.Someone remind me: What was Franken's eventual margin of victory? Oh yeah. Senator Smalley "won" by a whopping 312 votes. Gee, isn't that interesting? There were juuuust enough illegal votes available for Smalley to steal the election. What are the odds of that? Pretty good if the candidate has a "D" after his name... Remember, this is the same party that wanted to "count" votes for Gore behind closed, locked doors - and then smeared the opposition who wanted a media presence as a "mob"...
That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
I know, I know; a story about Democrats cheating. Next up on MArooned: Water is wet, and cinderblocks make lousy personal flotation devices...
That is all.
Story e-mailed to me by PISSED, who is trying to get me to live up to his name, apparently...
6 comments:
"Carruthers attributed differences in the numbers to Minnesota Majority's lack of access to nonpublic information, such as exact birth dates and other court records. For example, he said, "public records might show a felon was given 10 years probation, but internal records the county attorney has might show that the probation period was cut to five and the felon was eligible to vote." "
And that right there is what's going to make this impossible to ever figure out.
You can vote as a convicted felon in MN so long as you're not actually in prison at the time and you're not on probation. And if you ask anybody that's ever dealt with the judicial system at all you know probationary sentences are shortened up all the damned time, without much rhyme or reason, no judge needed, just a simple decision made by the probation officer.
There's no way election officials could ever keep up with that. Hell, even trying to figure it out 18 months after the election is still difficult.
Personally I think they just need to come up with a simpler metric. Either no felons vote, felons out of prison can vote, or everybody (even those in prison) can vote. At least there's no ambiguity there.
I've made my peace with my state's political heritage. I don't believe the Ds engineered a bunch of felons to vote for their gain - stupidity rather than malice feels more likely here.
While the election was a clear picture of how bad a system can break down at the fringe, I'm OK with it. We're rarely at that fringe and more harm than good will come from jiggering the election process further. See e-voting. The system in place works well enough often enough.
I have to admit the Comedic Senator hasn't done anything to show up on my radar. Unlike just about every other DC traveler from MN, both R and D.
WTF?!?!?!?
Whaddya mean water's wet?!?
tweaker
Yeah, that's one we're really proud of. Sorry.
Yeah.
He is one to be proud of!
A failed comedian.
A failed radio personality.
A hothead who attacks college students.
An asshat.
Makes me so damn proud to live in Minnesotah I could just puke!
10,000 lakes
10,000 Loons and One Clown!
democrats lie.
water is wet.
cinderblocks make lousy personal.....
JayG are you trying to put thoughts into minnesotan heads?
Post a Comment