Mark Ritchie

The danger of paper cuts was greater than the chance that Al Franken would lose his 225-vote lead to Norm Coleman today as Minnesota officials ripped open 351 more ballots from last year’s U.S. senate race in front of the state’s election-contest court. Franken increased his lead by 87 votes. “I think we are done,” said Franken attorney Marc Elias afterward.

Minnesota’s secretaries of state traditionally hold the post a long time, and even after they leave office they like to stay in the game. DFLer Joan Growe writes in the Pioneer Press today that former Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman has gotten a fair post-election shake. Mary Kiffmeyer, now a GOP state representative, sought a probe [...]

When locals gather to choose delegates at DFL precinct caucuses Tuesday, three Minneapolis City Council candidates will be looking for the first signs of success from skills they picked up at a recent weekend at Camp Wellstone.

A proposed bill that would make Minnesota’s voter requirements among the strictest in the nation was voted down in the House State and Local Government Operations Reform, Technology and Elections Committee on Thursday.

Left to right: Kiffmeyer, Day, Ritchie

Voters who have trouble filling in an oval on a ballot get no sympathy from state Sen. Dick Day and state Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, leaving Kiffmeyer’s successor as Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, to preach love, constitutional protection and enfranchisement for tremorous or otherwise-impaired citizens. For all three the [...]

Al Franken’s campaign has written to Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie asking that he be issued a certificate declaring him the winner of the U.S. Senate contest. Last week the state Canvassing Board certified results showing that Franken won the election by 225 votes, but former Sen. Norm Coleman has contested the results in state court.

Sometimes when the news leaves you seeing floaters before your eyes, all you have to do is wait a day or two for things to come into focus. On Friday, former Secretary of State (and freshly elected state representative) Mary Kiffmeyer found a range of faults with the Senate election recount between Al Franken and [...]

It was a part of a Minnesota Supreme Court order that few could love. Last month the campaigns of Al Franken and Norm Coleman got the right, by a 3-2 court ruling, to reject absentee ballots in the state’s Senate recount that election officials had determined were lawfully cast.

And reject they did, leaving about 400 individual voters with only one way to re-enfranchise themselves: by filing a lawsuit of their own. But they have to do it by Jan. 12, and it could cost as much as $5,000 per voter.

A much-criticized Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal editorial that called the Minnesota State Canvassing Board “meek,” Secretary of State Mark Ritchie a man of partisan “machinations,” and Al Franken — who the board determined had won 225 more votes in the statewide recount than former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman — “tainted and undeserving,” has prompted a retort from one of its targets: State Canvassing Board member Edward Cleary.

Al Franken has emerged from the Senate recount with a 225-vote lead over incumbent Norm Coleman. The five-member State Canvassing Board unanimously certified the results at a hearing Monday afternoon. Nearly two months after the election, and following a painstaking statewide manual recount of nearly three million ballots, Franken received 1,212,431 votes, while Coleman earned 1,212,206.