Franken campaign sues for lists of rejected absentee voters, shoots itself in foot

As Pat Lopez reports in the Strib, the Al Franken campaign has filed suit against Ramsey County to compel disclosure of the names and addresses of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected.

Legally and politically, it’s a perfectly legitimate move to ensure that every vote is counted, but Team Franken stepped into a PR nightmare by embellishing the news of their lawsuit with the high-pathos anecdotal case of an 84-year-old Beltrami County woman whose ballot was rejected because a stroke had altered her signature.

Best Coleman/Franken recount preview: Ragsdale’s Pioneer Press column

The Pi Press’s veteran political reporter and analyst Jim Ragsdale has a must-read column on the pending Minnesota US Senate recount.

The Coleman campaign, while promising to “work together to get things done,” has dished most of the dirt, suggesting that normal bounces in the unofficial results are evidence of vote-tampering or worse. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty jumped in this week, saying that the question is whether “ballots from outside the process are going to be allowed in.”

I understand the freak-out factor for the Republican team when the net result of the “unofficial” changes has benefitted Franken, the Democrat. That will be sorted out in the recount. But having our top Republican officials suggest that state and local election officials are crooked is irresponsible and reminiscent of the battle in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Tallahassee in November and December 2000.

Ragsdale then goes on to compare Florida 2000 to Minnesota 2008.

Team Coleman jumps on Mark Ritchie MSNBC comment

UPDATED W/ VIDEO [below]: Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (pictured) elicited the scorn of the Norm Coleman campaign today after making the following remarks in a morning appearance on MSNBC:
“Their [the Coleman campaign's] goal is to win…