There would be problems of this sort in any election this close. (With almost three million votes, the election is closer than 90% of the trials of a coin-flipping experiments would be.) So far nothing bad has really happened. The process is going forward as prescribed, with a few adjustments, and so far routine mistakes have been routinely corrected -- the absentee ballot question and the 133 lost ballot question still need to be dealt with.

Unless one candidate or the other pulls away from the other in a big way (not at all likely) the loser is sure to sue, and that's as it should be -- that's what courts are for. Either Pawlenty or the Senate might end up deciding at some point. That's as it should be too -- we have courts for a reason. There's no easy way to deal with an election this close.

The reason your cute article is destructive is that the national Republicans (Coulter, Limbaugh, and others) are already talking about a stolen election, with no evidence at all -- various Google combinations of "Franken" + "steal/ stolen/ stealing" + "election" get thousands of hits.(Local Republicans are being somewhat more decent, though Coleman's campaign has gone over the line a few times).

If Franken wins or if the election is undecidable, the Republican screaming will become unendurable. Legit journalists in search of an a cute, easy story should not make things easier for the Republican media zombies.

I've turned my comment above into a blog post:

http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2008/12/httpwwwpolitico.htm

The 100-vote mistake was a transcription-error discrepancy between the unofficial count the night of the election and the official count the next day. The election night reports are rushed and mostly for the benefit of the news people. In most cases they're good enough to call an election safely, but not in an election this close -- the margin is less than 0.01%.

The corrections from the quick and dirty election-night count and the present have amounted to about 500 out of 2.9 million. Franken is hoping for a few hundred more in the same direction. He's got a real chance, but there's no guarantee that he'll get them.

Basically everything is being done routinely and everything is on schedule. The official report was planned for next Friday, and with a little luck it will be made. One way or another, whichever guy loses will probably sue. Both sides are fighting this to the end, and that's as it chould be.

I've been tracking this issue on the internet, and there's a lot of junk out there. A lot of people seem to hate Franken because of SNL. I've only seen him as a candidate and he's an excellent candidate. Other people talk about Florida 2000, but that's not true either. Everything's being done as well as it could be -- it's just a freakishly close election. (If you flip 2.9 million coins, the majority of the time you'll get a margin of greater than 192 votes.)

The worst junk is bonehead whining by Republicans talking about cheating. There's no evidence of cheating. All the claims have been checked and no one has come up with anything. There were never any votes found in the trunk of someone's car. They know what happened to the lost 133 ballots. Coleman never was declared the winner -- the first official certification will be next Friday, if the schedule is kept.

There's not a single fact in what you said. Do you actually have any idea at all what's going on? Do you have anything specific to say? That was just fact-free venting.

Republicans haven't been showing themselves well on this issue.

Woops! I meant "Voter Fraud". L.L. is cool with me.

I was switching titles and authors. This constant blog surfing wears me down. Little Leaper is a moron.

Sarah Palin had an interview with Rush on October 15. Were Bristol and Levi with her then? Maybe Limbaugh was Sherry Johnston's oxy connection, via Levi.

Historically Wasilla has been more of meth and weed town, but with the next President of the US living there they were due for an upscaling,

Maybe Peretz thinks he's the Franz Fanon of the Jews. Fanon argued that oppressed peoples who had been taught to cringe by colonial violence had to use symbolic counterviolence in order to regain their self-respect and independence.

Around 1968 everyone was reading Fanon, who had a lot of influence on black nationalism. You can be sure that Peretz read him too. Elsewhere I have nominated the Norman Podhoretz for this position, based on his essay "My Negro Problem -- and Ours" in which he cast Negroes as the oppressor. (Norman Mailer auditioned for the part, but he was too fucked up). The cringing Jew was, in fact, a stereotype of literature up until very recently, whereas the cringing Israeli isn't.

No, I'm not kidding.

I should have said that Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" is not a political tract and is eminently worth reading today. He was a psychiatrist and a large part of his book is about the effects of torture both on the tortured and the torturer. It was true in Algeria, as it was more recently in El Salvador, that the men in charge of actually killing and torturing on a day-to-day basis were low-ranking, disposable, and under brutal discipline. Some of the torture managers might have looked in from time to time, but they didn't have to face their own brutality day in and day out.

Whether he's being ironic or straightforward, 5 man trio is equally despicable.

As I said, 5 man, you're just as much a shit as if you really were Hamas.

(Yeah, yeah, don't feed the trolls.)