Although state law gives the governor power to fill a Senate vacancy, most think Gov. Tim Pawlenty would likely have no role, or inclination, to plug the gap. The Senate must first declare the seat vacant, some experts say, and it is unlikely to do so amid an ongoing election dispute.
The governor’s office last week said Pawlenty had the authority to appoint a senator only in the case of a permanent vacancy and did not view a temporary gap caused by the recount as applicable.
Amy Klobuchar chimes in as well. It’s the first time I’ve seen her quoted about what might happen and it is worth noting she may play a key role:
Regarding the length of a vacancy, Klobuchar said she believes there is still “a good possibility” that the Canvassing Board will finish up by Jan. 6 and even a better chance that Minnesota will have a new senator a week or so later.
“If the Canvassing Board declares a winner, that should be our senator,” she said, even if a court challenge were to follow. “[The Senate] could seat a senator pending the litigation.”
The way it’s looking now is that when all the ballots are counted and the results certified, Al Franken will likely be our next Senator and will be seated as our Seantor. Team Coleman is likely preparing multiple new ways to try to contest the results as their current ideas (e.g. “there’s duplicate ballots”, “Mark Ritchie is a communist”, “the Canvassing Board is biased”) have been baseless.
Have the technical problems stopped new posts?
From the Star Tribune article today it appears — albeit without the benefit of seeing any of the relevant ballots — that the Coleman campaign is trying to derail the counting of wrongly rejected absentee ballots by exploiting the Supreme Court requirement that the two campaigns consent to the ballots that are reviewed. Coleman can potentially refuse to consent to counting any ballots he thinks came from DFL voters. Although we’ve heard a lot of gibberish about “disenfranchisement” in recent weeks, there is a very real possibility that the ballots of voters who did everything right will not be counted because Coleman doesn’t want them counted.
It seems that a little public pressure not to cherry pick which voters get to have their ballots considered would be appropriate at this time.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/36833124.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUs
I shouldnt be surprised, but Coleman wants to accept 10% of the mistakenly rejected ballots (probably verified to see if they were registered as republicans first) and add into the count a few hundred that were rejected for reason