Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada thinks he knows what’s best for Minnesota. During a recent interview with The Politico, Sen. Reid flatly declared, “Norm Coleman will never ever serve [again] in the Senate. He lost the election. He can stall things, but he’ll never serve in the Senate.” 

 Sorry, Harry. That’s not how our system of government works. Washington politicians don’t get to determine who represents Minnesotans in Washington; Minnesotans do. If the results of the upcoming contest of the U.S. Senate affirm him as the winner, Sen. Norm Coleman will be on his way back to Washington to begin his second term in office. Given the broken nature of the recount, we must ensure that the results of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race are accurate, valid and comprehensive. To have confidence in the final result, we must as Sen. Coleman stated, “get it right.”  

Getting it right will take time. To be sure, several critical issues brought to public attention during the recount phase can only be dealt with during an election contest, including double counting of ballots, so-called “missing” ballots and the exclusion of hundreds of wrongly rejected absentee ballots from all over our state. 

For weeks, Al Franken and his high-priced lawyers told Minnesotans they were committed to counting “every vote.” Now it’s become obvious that Franken and his team no longer care to count all the votes. Sitting on an artificial lead, Franken and company have made the cold, political calculation that adding new wrongly rejected absentee ballots would imperil their chances. During the recount phase, Team Franken refused to even consider opening over 654 absentee ballots which may have been wrongly rejected. 

In spite of ample case law to the contrary, the Canvassing Board also accepted vote totals in the recount of 133 “missing” ballots from a precinct in Minneapolis. While there was no physical sign of the ballots ever existed and Minneapolis’ chief election official said initially that the 133 ballots were likely double counted, the Canvassing board included these ballots in their certified total.

In spite of the concerns of  Supreme Court Justice Barry Anderson that “it’s very likely there was double counting,” the Canvassing Board declined to consider this glaring problem which occurred in over two dozen precincts in Minneapolis and put forth certified vote totals which included the double counting of votes.  As a result, the constitution’s sacred guarantee of “one person, one vote” has been rendered obsolete.

As we all know, democracy can be messy and it can take longer to sort out the true winner than we would like.  While speed is optimal, accuracy is essential.  We must get it right. 

Ron Carey

chairman

Republican Party

of Minnesota

St. Paul