Minnesota Election Court: Franken Won. Period.

Well, the verdict has finally been handed down. In what was a (in my opinion) completely unsurprising turn of events, the Minnesota Election Court has declared Al Franken the official winner of the 2008 Senatorial Race. According to the court, Franken won by 312 votes.

Wow. After over five months of legal wranglings, there it is. It is far from the end, however. Norm Coleman will be appealing the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and possibly even the United States Supreme Court (though I doubt they would touch the thing after 2000). But this is a huge victory for Franken.

To make a long story short, the judges basically rejected every claim Coleman’s team made, and affirmed practically everything Franken’s team said. It doesn’t get any clearer than this. Franken won. Coleman lost. A razor thin margin, to be sure, but it’s there nonetheless.

My thoughts now go to NY-20, and the counting of absentee ballots between Scott Murphy and Jim Tedisco. Last I heard, Murphy was ahead by 25 votes. My hope is that we won’t see a repeat of Minnesota here in New York. Though my hopes will most likely be dashed.

On a separate note, apologies for not updating very frequently. I’ve been very busy with school. Papers, readings, etc… Interesting stuff (some of it… most of it?), but time-consuming nonetheless. Worry not, though. I am here and I do remember this blog. I refuse to let it just die!

Me And Scott Murphy

It’s a picture of me and Scott Murphy. The quality is bad, taken with my phone, and I can’t say I have the nicest phone in the world. Still, I think it’s pretty cool.

Will he win today? I don’t know. I think that if I was forced to pick a winner, it would be Murphy. Although he started out with huge deficit against Tedisco, Murphy has really made a name for himself. On top of that, he has the momentum going for him. On February 26th, Siena was showing him with a 12-point deficit against Tedisco. The latest Siena poll (.pdf) shows Murphy with a 4-point lead.

With Special Elections, especially one for a Congressional seat, turnout is always extremely low, so the margin of error on such a poll could be very high. Nate Silver makes some good points concerning this:

“Siena is the only non-partisan pollster to have surveyed this race. (The Tedisco camp disputes the result, citing internal polling that still shows them with a lead). Siena’s record as a pollster is, to be frank, fairly average, although this particular race is almost literally in their back yard, as NY-20 wraps around the town of Loudonville, where Siena College is located.”

Still, if the polling shows one thing, and one thing at all, it’s that the momentum is in Murphy’s favor.

I understand that this post is slightly late, as the polls close in three and a half hours. Still, I thought I’d comment nonetheless.

Late update: Something I wanted to mention and forgot to was that Murphy mentioned when he came here that Tedisco isn’t even voting, because, well… he’s not registered in this district. On top of that, he’s not campaigning today.  He’s not canvassing. Not knocking on doors. Nothing. That just seems a little sad and pathetic to me.