Kyl Warns Senate Dems On Franken

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl has warned Democrats not to try to seat Al Franken any time soon, and he predicts the legal process will take at least a month to unfold, meaning the Senate may be stuck with 99 members well into February.

In an unusual move, Kyl went to the Senate floor this morning to lay out all the reasons why the Minnesota Senate election remains unresolved, and he listed Sen. Norm Coleman's arguments before the Minnesota courts. Coleman's election lawsuit contends there are newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, wrongly rejected absentee ballots and double counting of votes.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[thepoliticalcat]

Why is anyone paying attention to this worthless gasbag?

[TonyCInSaTx]

The Minnesota law is probably unconstitutional (US Constitution); it allows a sore loser filing frivolous lawsuits to veto an election, perhaps indefinitely. This denies Minnesotans the right to equal representation in the Senate versus the citizens of other states.

It doesn't make a difference whether Coleman's particular lawsuit is frivolous or not. How many lawsuits can he theoretically file? One per ballot in queston? The law is prima facie unconstitutional if it allows one person to subvert the electoral process and deny others their right to be represented. To the best knowledge of the election officials Franken has won. The Senate is in session, Minnesotans are legally entitled to TWO senators for debates and negotiations and votes, and keeping Franken out denies them their input to the legislative process. Whoever gets seated will have been elected by almost exactly half of them, so it makes no difference, but Franken is the putative winner at this point and should take the seat immediately.

If Coleman's challenges succeed and overturn the election, Franken will have to relinquish the seat. But we cannot allow Minnesota to be under-represented for what could theoretically be years of one lawsuit after another.

[tempest624]

If he talks about it on the Senate Floor, he must be right! Even though, the news stories published in the Star Tribune up until now have proven him wrong.