Minnesota Supreme Court: Franken Won Senate Election
Won by a margin of just 312 votes
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/30/2009 4:25:20 PM
It turns out that the 2010's could be the Al Franken decade, at least in the Nation's Capital.
The Minnesota Supreme Court has held that Franken won the Senate election last November against incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and should be certified as such.
Franken is the former Saturday Night Live writer/performer who went on to host a progressive radio talk show and pen the book, Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and Other Observations.
In an opinion handed down Tuesday, the court upheld a lower court's ruling that Franken got the most votes and the Coleman camp had not provided sufficient evidence of ballots that should not have been counted or any errors by the lower court that would justify overturning its decision.
The final tally was Coleman 1,212,629 votes to Coleman's 1,212,217, or a margin for Franken of just 312 votes.
That was the finding of the election board recount and a lower court decision upholding it, but Coleman took his case to the state Supreme Court. A Coleman spokesman had not returned a call for comment on the decision.
When Franken is installed, the Democrats could have a 60-vote, veto-proof majority in the Senate on issues with which they agree with independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Republican turned Democrat, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
The presdient was quick to give a shout-out to the future junior senator from Minnesota.
"I look forward to working with Senator-Elect Franken to build a new foundation for growth and prosperity by lowering health care costs and investing in the kind of clean energy jobs and industries that will help America lead in the 21st century,” said the President in a statement.
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