This is a new wrinkle, or at least I haven't heard it before and I follow it closely. I'm referring to the idea that the court declare no winner and Pawlenty appoint someone with a special election next year. I was at too Democratic fundraisers last week, one for Franken and one for the Minnesota state party, and this was mentioned at neither, so I'm pretty sure this is a new idea on the part of the Republicans. Legally, I don't see that there's any basis for this action, but Pawlenty has previously demonstrated that he'll grossly abuse power where there's a crack of legality. In other words, it's not entirely inconceivable the Republicans would try to someone have a special appointment. A tricky part would be the sec of state has to sign too, and I can't see him doing that.

Now that Pawlenty's deserted him, Kleefeld will reach for anything to save his job

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In all fairness to Kline, he did make at least one legitimate point, regardless of partisanship: That the state should look to the example of Georgia, which held a runoff election when nobody got 50% in their Senate election, and change their own laws to do the same.
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Georgia also uses easily hackable electronic voting machines...doesn't sound fair or legitimate to me.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5654

- FTF

"In all fairness to Kline, he did make at least one legitimate point, regardless of partisanship: That the state should look to the example of Georgia, which held a runoff election when nobody got 50% in their Senate election, and change their own laws to do the same."

C'mon, Eric. That's bulls**t. Surely you know the problems with runoff elections. Minnesota had almost 3 million votes cast in the November election. There is no way that any state replicates the turnout of a general election in any runoff election. "Regardless of partisanship" that disenfranchisement of the original voting electorate is a MAJOR problem.

Minnesota went through a rigorous, transparent electoral process, and Franken won. Do you have a problem accepting that?

My suggestion: Stand them both about 20 paces apart and let them shoot it out. In fact, if we did this for ALL races, we would no longer get the bottom of the pool... instead, our politicians would still be dirty, but at least they would have expertise in something besides hot air... IMHO

But there has to be a winner, and the law clearly describes the process by which a winner is chosen. Vote;
Recount if close;
Challenge the results;
Appeal;
Supreme Court Decison.

The law is a process. Will we ever have full, complete, doubtless, unquestionable certainty of the actual numbers of ballots? Of course not. But the law describes a process that, when followed, provides us with a just conclusion.