Franken at far right. Photo: SNL Archive

In a story on the Senate Judiciary Committee taking up Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court next week, the New York Times makes mention of something noted here last week: committee member Al Franken’s 1991 TV portrayal of a U.S. senator on the same committee, questioning a Supreme Court nominee.

Franken has said he’ll ask Sotomayor about campaign finance reform, but on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” he was only looking for a date.

It was the opening bit on the SNL show on Oct. 12, 1991, satirizing Senate hearings about the nomination of Clarence Thomas.

UPDATE: NBC has now released the video clip of the sketch. Watch it here. 

Franken played the late Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois in trademark bow-tie. Among the other actors were the late Phil Hartman as Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late Chris Farley as Sen. Howard Heflin, and Chris Rock as Long Dong Silver. Kevin Nealon opened the skit in the role of Sen. Joe Biden (now vice president, then committee chairman).

Here’s the transcript of the sketch. Franken’s lines are near the end.

BIDEN: [ banging gavel ] Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please! Please! Professor Hill, I want to thank you for your … patience here today. You’ve shown remarkable courage throughout your testimony. It couldn’t have been easy for you — or any of us — to sit here for the last seven hours and talk about penis size, or large-breasted women having sex with animals, or pubic hairs on soft drink cans, or oral sex, or the black man’s sexual prowess, or large-breasted women having sex with animals. But we appreciate your candor. [ rest of committee shake their heads and smile ] And we, uh … hope we can reschedule you for another session tomorrow.

ANITA HILL: Thank you, Senator. [ stands up to leave, bumps into next witness, Judge Clarence Thomas, and quickly walks away from him ]

BIDEN: The committee, at this time, would like to call Judge Clarence Thomas. Judge Thomas? [ Judge Clarence Thomas sits ] Judge Thomas, we’re sorry to have to bring you back, but, as you know, some pretty serious allegations have been made by our previous witness.

THOMAS: First of all, I want to say that these proceedings are a travesty!

BIDEN: Mmm-hmm. Well, I understand that. But you did ask Ms. Hill out on a date?

THOMAS: Uh … yes, I did.

[ the committee whisper amongst themselves at the revealing testimony ]

BIDEN: And she refused?

THOMAS: That’s correct.

BIDEN: How did you go about asking her out for this date?

THOMAS: I’m not sure what you mean, Senator.

BIDEN: Well.. did you just go right up and ask her? Or did you have one of her friends tell her that you thought she was cute?

THOMAS: I just walked right up and asked her.

[ the committee whisper amongst themselves ]

KENNEDY: Were you, uh.. were you drunk at the time?

THOMAS: No, I was not.

BIDEN: But she wouldn’t go out with you?

THOMAS: No.

BIDEN: Was she aware that, as her boss, you could have her fired?

THOMAS: She must have been.

[ the committee members gasp at the shocking statement ]

BIDEN: And she still didn’t go out with you? [ Thomas nods no ] Now, Judge Thomas, there have been charges by Professor Hill that you talked casually with her about graphic scenes in porno movies. Is that true?

THOMAS: Yes, it is.

BIDEN: And.. did that work? Did it break the ice?

THOMAS: No, Senator, it actually offended her.

[ the committee is surprised the tactic didn't work ]

HEFLIN: Uh.. what porno movie did you talk about?

THOMAS: Well.. I mainly spoke about a favorite of mine, called “The Hind-Lick Manuever”.

HEFLIN: That’s a good movie, Judge! But do you think hard-core porno is the way to go? Because I feel women prefer softer porn.

BIDEN: Senator Thurmond?

SEN. STROM THURMOND: I agree with Senator Heflin. Yeah, that’s right! The women like something with more stories and costumes, that’ll transport ‘em to another place and time. That’s right! Women don’t like close-ups of oversized genitalia! That’s just never gonna turn ‘em on!

[ committee agrees ]

KENNEDY: A, uh … another good thing is to get them out on your boat for some reason, because, uh … because then it’s really hard for them to get away.

BIDEN: Do you have a question, Senator Kennedy?

KENNEDY: Uh, yes, I do. Have you ever tried coming out of the bathroom nude, and acting like you didn’t know someone was there?

THOMAS: Uh.. no.

KENNEDY: Well, that’s too bad. Because that works, too.

SIMON: Um … Judge? Judge Thomas? Judge Thomas, are you aware of that, uh.. division of our.. government.. known as the, uh … Criminal Justice, uh … Department?

THOMAS: Of course I am, Senator!

SIMON: Well, you know when you walk in the main entrance of the Criminal Justice Building.. there’s this receptionist with short brown hair?

THOMAS: The, uh … one at the third desk on the left?

SIMON: No, no. The one at the big, circular desk, uh … right there in the center there.

THOMAS: Oh, yes — Sandy.

SIMON: Yes. Sandy. Um … do you think that she’d go out with me?

THOMAS: Well, Senator Simon, not knowing your technique, I feel that it would be unfair for me to prejudge your chances with her.

SIMON: Uh-huh. Uh … you think it’s the bow tie, then?

BIDEN: Senator Simon. Please.

SIMON: Women just don’t seem to like the bow tie, do they?

BIDEN: Senator Simon. Please!

SIMON: Uh, sorry. Sorry.

BIDEN: Judge Thomas, I’d like to thank you for your testimony. You’ve been very forthcoming, and, may I say, it’s been an education.

THOMAS: Thank you, Senator. [ stands up and exits ]

BIDEN: The committee calls its next witness. [ black man walks up ] Sir, would you please state your name?

SILVER: Long Dong Silver.

[ committee members smile and shake their heads ]

BIDEN: Mr. Silver, we apologize for calling you back one more time.. but many of us on the committee are admirers of your work, and.. well, frankly, we could just listen to you all day. Now, we understand you have a statement?

SILVER: Uh, yes. I do. “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”

“My vote was counted,” Guerra said, triumphantly. “They got it November 3. It makes me feel a whole lot better. I thought I would have to live with never knowing. It’s an important election.”

Guerra’s experience has left her husband, Chris Farley, of the opinion that it’s “onerous” to require that out-of-state absentee ballots carry the signature of a registered Minnesota voter as witness, or the signature and seal of a notary public.

[M]y wife spent part of the afternoon on the Saturday before the election trying to get a notary. She told me she went to a local bank (where you can always find a notary). They asked if she was a customer. Nope, she was not. So they told her they would not notarize anything at any price. … After she called to tell me this, I remembered that my mother, who also lives in Utica, NY, is a notary public … Phew! Finding a notary public is a somewhat obscure skill. I bet the vast majority of young voters, who’ve never needed to have anything notarized in their lives, have no clue where to go for this service. It’s pretty obvious that this requirement suppresses absentee voter participation.

Only 12 other states have witness/notary requirements on par with Minnesota’s. A few others require a second signature if the voter has received assistance in completing the ballots, but most have no such requirement at all.

“It’s just weird considering Minnesota’s otherwise liberal voting laws,” comments Farley.

But have you heard even one word yet from those voters?

“Oh, crap.”

Well, now you’ve heard two words.

Paula Guerra of St. Paul left for Utica, N.Y., on Oct. 11 to help her mother care for her ailing father. Her husband, Chris Farley, applied online to have Ramsey County send her an absentee ballot. It arrived two weeks before the election; Guerra mailed the ballot back the same day.

Then on Halloween, just four days before Election Day, Ramsey County returned Guerra’s ballot to her, unopened — rejected due to improper witnessing. Also included in the packet from the county were a new ballot and a page of instructions. “Oh, crap, I didn’t know this,” Guerra recalls thinking.

“There was a yellow sheet that they put in,” Guerra says. “It wasn’t in there the first time.”

The instructions explained that absentee voters who are out of state need to get their ballots signed by a notary public if no registered Minnesota voter is handy.

“I just had my sister sign as a witness,” Guerra said. Her sister is a New York resident. So this time Guerra got her mother-in-law, a notary public, to sign and stamp the ballot envelope.

“My God, you want to vote,” said the woman at the post office counter the next day, where Guerra paid a $15 overnight rate to send her second ballot back to Ramsey County.

It was supposed to arrive by Monday, or Tuesday morning, Election Day, at the latest.

“I’m really hoping it was counted,” Guerra says. “I wasn’t that concerned about Obama. It was for the Senate race. I knew it was going to be tight. It was on all the news shows.”

UPDATE: Guerra called Ramsey County after this post appeared to learn the status of her ballot. See this followup post. 

She said her ballot’s marked for Franken.

That instructions were missing from the first absentee ballot mailing appears to have been a mistake. The Ramsey County Elections office tells the Minnesota Independent that including the sheet is standard.

But Guerra and Farley say that her mishap might have been avoided had the ballot return envelope itself carried clearer directions. Another shortcoming they see, as Farley noted in a comment posted at MnIndy, is that the return envelope doesn’t provide space for a notary’s stamp and signature.

Ramsey County keeps records of rejected absentee ballots returned to voters, I was told today by an official who also invited Guerra to call to confirm her ballot was received and counted. Getting the names of absentee voters like Guerra who had ballots rejected but who may not have been as persistent — and may not have have been properly rejected in the first place — is the goal of a suit by the Franken campaign that was heard this morning in Ramsey County District Court, with the judge ruling in Franken’s favor this afternoon.

The story behind Guerra’s rejected absentee ballot demonstrates the difficulties that even well-intentioned and highly motivated voters can have from afar. Much of the recent debate over the Coleman-Franken U.S. Senate recount that commenced today in Minnesota has centered on whether the state will also examine absentee ballots to find (and count) any that local officials rejected improperly.

While voters’ intent on ballots that have been accepted is held sacred under Minnesota election law, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made clear that the best intentions of rejected absentee voters to properly cast ballots are not. Absentee ballots that fail simple rules about signing, witnessing and mailing simply don’t get counted.

And while one problem appears to be the lack of a mechanism to promptly remedy improper rejections, Paula Guerra’s case suggests another problem: following absentee voting rules isn’t made as simple as it should be.