What About the Absentee President?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009The WSJ opinion page is notoriously right-leaning, particularly compared to its news section, but an editorial today is pretty far out even for them. Check this, from “The Absentee Senator“, Wall Street Journal:
This is now the second time Republicans have been beaten in this kind of legal street fight. In 2004, Dino Rossi was ahead in the election-night count for Washington Governor against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire’s team demanded the right to rifle through a list of provisional votes that hadn’t been counted, setting off a hunt for “new” Gregoire votes. By the third recount, she’d discovered enough to win. This was the model for the Franken team.
First, Norm Coleman’s concession was hardly “gracious” — he drew out the process in court for seven months, leaving Minnesota down one senator the whole time. And if anybody is the model for election legal street fights and sketchy vote-count maneuvering through the courts, I think that would have to be the guy who “won” in the 2000 Presidential election.
Glass houses, yo.
Update: A nice outline of how Franken won.
As a native Washintonian I kept close track of the Gregoire/Rossi recount…and it was ugly. Mostly becuase the Washington election board had trouble coming up with a consistent policy for reviewing provisional and absentee ballots, and while Gregoire’s team did seek out provisional ballots they did so by seeking provisional ballots from democrat leanign districts, while Rossi’s team sough out those from Republican districts…and ebcause none of the districts or state eelction board had a clear way to count these ballots it turned really bad. Also, neither was a very good candidate.