| Now that the Minnesota election contest is finally history and Senator Al Franken has received his election certificate, it is time to think about what lessons can be taken from this marathon. First, and this is mostly a Minnesota issue since other states handle things differently, there should be a process for seating a provisional winner while the parties wage eternal war in the courts. My personal belief is that one of the factors contributing to the refusal of the losing candidate to back down earlier was that the seat stayed vacant while the contest was being heard. I don't think the two national parties would have spent as much money supporting the legal fees of both sides if the seat had been provisionally-filled. Second, as we saw in the New York house seat race this Spring, it is important to have folks at any place that ballots are being cast to challenge questionable ballots including questionably valid absentee ballots. Ultimately, what lost Coleman his arguments in court where the fact that he couldn't go back to absentee ballots which might have been erroneously accepted on election night. Once a ballot is deposited in the ballot box and mixed with other ballots, the only challenge that can be made to the ballot is regarding voter intent. Third, as previously learned in the Washington election contest and vigorously applied in this race, it is better to over-challenge ballots than to under-challenge ballots. Until the canvassing board or the courts start reviewing ballots, you do not know how they are going to address certain issues. You might think you know the right rule, but you don't know the actual rule that will be applied. Fourth, the local election officials matter greatly -- including election judges. If you are in a state where the party has influence over who gets picked as the Democrat election judge, do your best to get good people in that position. It will be the election judges that make sure that procedures are properly followed and that a good record is made of any problems that arise. Not all mistakes made on election night can be remedied later. Fifth, optic scan ballots are much better than punchcards or touchscreens. They can be counted just as quickly, and they make a good record of voter intent (as confusing as that sometimes can be). Sixth, we really do have a good election system in this country. Not perfect, we could do a much better job of making it easy to register and vote. However, in a 3,000,000 vote election with 300,000 absentee ballots cast and 10-12,000 ballots originally excluded, we had a swing of 300-400 votes before new absentee ballots were added to the mix (a .01% swing). In short, except in really, really close elections like Minnesota's, we can have a decent amount of confidence that the results are accurate. |
