Unless Franken gets temporary certificate, Senate seat could stay empty 5 months

Without a new state law requiring a provisional election certificate in cases like Al Franken’s, Minnesota could be without its second U.S. senator for four to five months. That’s the opinion of Hamline University School of Law professor David Schultz, who advised state Rep. Phyllis Kahn on her bill that would seat Franken temporarily until former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s current election contest trial is resolved.

U.S. Senate recount: What’s next?

Al Franken won the U.S. Senate contest by 225 votes. That was the determination that the five-member State Canvassing Board put their signatures to on Monday. Franken duly declared victory, pronouncing himself the “next senator from Minnesota.”

But as subsequent events have made abundantly clear that doesn’t mean the never-ending Senate contest is over. Indeed the legal contest filed by Norm Coleman’s campaign on Tuesday means it could still drag on for months. Here’s a quick primer on what will unfold in the coming weeks.

U.S. Senate recount: Will the courts ultimately decide the victor?

As the U.S. Senate contest lurches forward, with nearly 80 percent of the ballots recounted and Norm Coleman clinging to a roughly 200-vote lead over Al Franken, a resolution finally looks to be on the horizon. But as events have repeatedly proven over the last three weeks, nothing is as simple as it seems when a senate seat that potentially could give Democrats a fillibuster-proof 60-seat majority is on the line. All eyes will now turn to the five-member statewide canvassing board as it meets tomorrow to deal with the thorny question of whether to consider absentee ballots that were rejected by local election officials.

The Schultz Report: Is Minnesota another Florida 2000? No, and yes

In this week’s edition of the Schultz Report audiocast, David Schultz examines the looming vote recount in the Minnesota US Senate face-off between Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Is the situation here another Florida 2000 cage match, as so many pundits are claiming? In most respects, Schultz thinks the answer is no. But when it comes to the stakes and the political gamesmanship, that’s another matter.

The Al Franken Senate campaign: How to sit still in the polls — and win

In politics as in the intensive care unit, a flat line is usually a sign that something bad is happening. At the moment, however, I’m looking at the essentially flat — actually slightly declining — arc of Al Franken’s polling performance in the Minnesota US Senate race, and that line describes a very different story: the transformation of Franken from also-ran to frontrunner without ever budging more than a couple of points in poll standings.

How did this happen?

The Schultz Report: Hard to say whether ‘anti-Americans’ dustup could beat Bachmann in conservative 6th

David Schultz, who’s been in Europe on a speaking tour about the US elections, is back with us again for a new installment of the Schultz Report. In this edition, we talk about the recent tightening in some of the national presidential polls, the Minnesota Senate race between Norm Coleman, Al Franken, and Dean Barkley, and — of course — the controversy engendered by Rep. Michele Bachmann’s rant about Barack Obama and other “anti-Americans” last Friday.

Poll perplex: Why David Schultz thinks Obama is up 10-12 points in Minnesota

The Schultz Report audiocast is on hold while David Schultz is traveling in Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union on a speaking tour about the US elections. But we managed to catch up with Schultz via e-mail earlier today in Finland (yesterday it was Estonia), where he graciously took time to answer a couple of questions about races back in Minnesota — specifically, what he made of the diametrically opposed Minnesota Senate and presidential polls we wrote about Monday, and why Senate candidate Dean Barkley seems to be taking a disproportionate amount of his support from Norm Coleman.

The Schultz Report: Obama, Dems need a compelling alternative to the Paulson swindle

This week in the Schultz Report, we discuss the only issue that matters at the moment–the financial meltdown on Wall Street and the Paulson plan that’s currently being bum-rushed through Congress, which would give the US Treasury secretary absolutely unprecedented power to buy up bad debt with public dollars, and without any public oversight or future public benefit in the form of equity in the companies we’re bailing out.

No Schultz Report this week

Just a reminder: As David Schultz noted in last week’s Schultz Report audiocast, he’s at a conference in Russia this week. He’ll be back with us next Friday.

Check out previous editions of The Schultz Report here.

The Schultz Report: Clinton, Pawlenty fighting tough odds to be their parties’ VP picks

In this Friday’s Schultz Report, we talk about the terminal stage of the Democratic presidential nomination race and about the buzz concerning US Senate dark horse Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer’s chances of emerging as an alternative to the controversial…