We enter the third month with only one senator representing us here in Minnesota, and it's surprising that life continues to go on just fine ["Minnesota Senate Race, Plagued With Defects, Could End in Supreme Court or Revote," usnews.com]. Better yet, we're saving the cost of paying a second senator. As far as I'm concerned the seat can go unfilled forever. And that's probably true for other states as well. What good do these people really do, other than spend money and raise taxes?
Comment by Jim of MN
This is the very reason a lot of people have given up on this country as a whole. No matter what we want to have happen something gets in the way, like poor counting and favored parties. If our elections were run without party lines and on content of what the candidates actually would like to do for their states, it would make it more fair and unbiased. What we have now is a power struggle that is not best suited for our state or our country as a whole. Until some of these factors are corrected, more and more people will refuse to participate in a process that makes this country the best in the world: our right to elect the person who can keep this country the greatest ever. From the inception of the voting process from the founding fathers until now it helps set us apart from the rest of the world. Revote and get it right. If there are people that willfully and knowingly act dishonestly in the process due to their particular likes or dislikes of the candidates, [then] that is fraud and they should be jailed, period!
Comment by Mark Vichorek of MN
Seriously, how hard is it to devise a method to collect and count votes? At what point did incompetence become so common in America? This is so embarrassing for the state of Minnesota. We can only hope someone (and it should be an army of someones) will come forward and take responsibility for this colossal failure. The winner of this election will never be known because those who ran it failed so badly. But one thing is certain, whoever ran this election should be run out of the state.
Comment by William Butler of NC
The Minnesota election case is not "plagued with defects." What it is plagued with is the flip-flopping and legal dodging and weaving of the [Norm] Coleman campaign, which has sought to exclude ballots it originally agreed to accept and has argued the opposite of positions it originally put forth, all in order to try and get the results to turn their way. The recount was straightforward. Local authorities, as the law directs them to do, applied state law to the best of their ability to determine which ballots should and should not be excluded. This legally constitutes equal application of the law—the fact that the same stack of ballots may not have been evaluated exactly the same by officials in two different counties does not matter. As long as they are applying state law in a uniform, fair, and reasonable manner, differences in the subjective interpretation of that law is a moot point. This is what is meant by local control of elections—the law sets out certain requirements local officials must follow in conducting elections, but allows a bit of leeway in determining how those requirements are met. It does not require that procedures in each county or district must exactly mirror those in all others—such a requirement would be impossible to enforce. And that's why Coleman's lawsuit is a colossal waste of time and public resources.
Comment by Kirk H. of MI
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