A satirist in the Senate might just not be the kind of member the club would want to allow inside. After all, how would it look if someone made fun of the stupidity that emanates from the right side of the aisle. That is why you advocate a new election correct?

No, I advocate a new election because this one is a joke. I believe both Franken and Coleman have made it this way.

Not everything has to be ideologically based, and I have no favorite in this race. I voted Bob Barr for President in November, the Democrat John Larson in my House district, and mostly upon name recognition (due to my lack of following the state races) for the rest, including one Republican. Most of the rest were Democrats, I believe.

Registered Independent since 2004 and briefly a Democrat when I first signed up.

Nice try, though.

In the interest of fairness and balance, the left side of the aisle has its share of stupidity, but in recent years stupidity from the right has dedicated monuments to itself…

In many ways I’d like to call shenanagins on this election and have a new one. It seems that pockets of ballots being found (still — they found 16 new ones last week) smells fishy. Honestly, I suspect both parties of being unethical and a new election, with only this question on the ballot, would focus their attention on the procedures and any “found” ballots would be immediately suspect.

There are several potential problem areas in Minnesota election law/procedures:

The “found” ballot problem has happened in past elections due to the rural nature of the state — My mom is an election judge in northern MN (a Republican, one of two in the area… seriously) and she said it is standard procedure for the head of the district to collect the physical ballots on election night, call in vote totals from the machine, and bring the physical ballots to town the followting day.

Another problem here is the lack of an actual early voting procedure. Instead, you can go to the county office and vote absentee — in person — if you aren’t going to be in the area on election day. I did this because I didn’t have time in my teaching schedule to get to the poll and back. If I could have just voted early, I would have. As the law sits — I could have gone to the polling place and cast a vote, which would have replaced my absentee vote — of course, you can see the potential pitfalls here…

Finally, there was no attempt at checking my ID to see if I actually WAS who I said I was AND we have a long history of allowing un-registered people to vote if someone will vouch for them. I think the reasoning was that proving residency at a new home is sometimes difficult — but, it seems to me that someone who has just moved to the area will have some kind of written verification of their address — if only some mail that has arrived or a lease.