Stolen Elections

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Supreme Court declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year’s Senate race again Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. All sorts of questions come to mind, but I will limit myself to just two.

The first question is: Why did it take so long to decide a winner? Put another way, Can’t we devise a system that ensures an accurate count and prevents voter fraud? It shouldn’t take nine months to figure out who wins an election, even if it’s a narrow election. We have in place electronic systems that allow any of use to go to any ATM machine in the world and withdraw money with complete accuracy. I refuse to believe we cannot devise a system with similar accuracy that prevents fraud.

That leads to the second question: How did Mr. Franken (who trailed Mr. Coleman on election night by 725 votes) end up being declared the winner? If you don’t think any tricks were involved read The Wall Street Journal editorial that said; “Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.” Those are pretty strong words from their editorial board. Of course, it makes sense since John Fund writes for The Wall Street Journal and has previously published a book with the title Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.

The editorial says that the “Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.” They were able to bring an additional 1,350 absentee votes from Franken-leaning countries and ended up finding enough votes to put Franken ahead.

The editorial reminds us that this is “the second time Republicans have bean beaten in this kind of legal street fight.” In 2004, Republican Dino Rossi was ahead of Democrat Christine Gregorie. Her legal team was able to rifle through a list of provisional votes and were able to find enough votes for her by the third recount.

Joseph Stalin once said: “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” I don’t know if fraud and manipulation was involved in these elections, though I suspect it. The answer is to devise an accurate, fraud-proof system of elections so that people counting the vote can’t manipulate the system. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.