Posts
No one has a claim on the seat. The voters have a claim on the seat. The candidates will not decide this, the voters will decide it. That's the beauty of it. (Source)Al Franken would make a great Senator. I have no doubt of that. Put aside his comedic persona you've known in the past and marvel at the class of the man. While his opponent, Norm Coleman,is doing everything in his power to shut down the recount, Al is simply making sure the voters voice is heard. This race was decided by 215 votes. There were 2.19 million votes cast. Doesn't that warrant a recount? By law, in the state of Minnesota, it does.
Coleman is simply taking a page out of the Republican playbook. This is a historically Republican act, and it goes back much further than the 2000 debacle where the Republicans shut down the recount in order to silence the will of the Florida voters. Republican success depends upon as few people voting as possible. They continually put up as many roadblocks to voting as they can, and when those don't work, they aren't above a few dirty tricks to game turnout. (In 2002, for example, the Republicans jammed the phone lines of a New Hampshire Democratic Get Out the Vote effort. A number of GOP officials were convicted.)
It is Republicans, such as Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland, that have tried to dilute the Voting Rights Act of 1965, because, you know, states like Georgia are no longer racist in their policies. I guess all those long lines in predominantly black areas are just a coincidence. I guess that predominantly black precincts receiving fewer machines and older machines is also a coincidence.
It is time for the federal government to pass an affirmative right to vote for all citizens of age. It is time that any attempt to infringe on this right be punished with as much severity as the law will allow. Disenfranchisement, in a Democracy, is perhaps our worse punishment. After all, the government does not represent the disenfranchised.
Count the votes. Get them right. That's more important than the cost or the time involved.
