The long-running battle for Minnesota’s Senate seat is finally over. Democracy – and Al Franken – won fair and square

In the end, the conspiracy theories became so laughable that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (RSCC) quietly removed its own “Minnesota Recount” website, once it became clear that no, the Democratic candidate Al Franken was not “stealing” the US Senate election in Minnesota, as the Republican party had been shamefully declaring, without actual evidence, for weeks following election day back on 4 November 2008.

Nearly eight months on from election day, Franken finally got to celebrate his election as Minnesota’s next US senator after the defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman dropped his quixotic legal challenge, and the state’s Republican governor announced he was going to formally approve Franken’s victory.

Although the victory was sealed today, the Republican claims of “voter fraud” became impossible to support long ago, because hand-marked paper ballots – nearly three million of them – as cast by the voters in the squeaker of an election, were actually being counted, in full view of the media and any interested citizen alike. To a ballot, they were all accounted for, and any disagreement about voter intent on those ballots was adjudicated in an open process by a bipartisan state canvassing board. All but a handful of those votes were determined unanimously by the board to have been cast either for Franken, for Coleman, for a third party candidate or for nobody at all.

The only question remaining after the weeks-long, painstaking, public hand-count was whether a number of uncounted absentee ballots, rejected as per the state’s strict standards for counting, should, in fact, be counted.

A tripartisan, three-judge panel took their time, in yet another fully public process, in reviewing evidence and hearing witness testimony presented by both sides. A few hundred more ballots were deemed to be legitimate and improperly rejected, and those too were then publicly counted – the counting again witnessed by all – and added to the final tally.

Hand-counted paper ballots proved, yet again, to be the gold standard in this election, which the state canvassing board, the three-judge election contest panel and now the state’s supreme court has affirmed as won by Franken, the former radio talkshow host and comedian, by a mere 312 votes.

Minnesota’s excellent election law, requiring both the secretary of state and the governor to sign the election certification only after all election contests are settled in the state, has assured that the next senator from Minnesota will not serve under a cloud of suspicion. Only the most insane and/or disingenuous could challenge the findings from one of the longest and most transparent election hand-counts in the history of the US.

Coleman, of course, may do exactly that. Though it’s exceedingly unlikely the US supreme court would rule in his favour – or even deem to review the case – Coleman still has the right to decide whether or not he’ll continue his fight, by taking it to the highest authority in the land.

If other states, and even the nation, had a law requiring that all ballots actually be counted, and all contests be fully settled before seating, we might have avoided the clouds of illegitimacy which always shrouded the Bush administration following the disputed election results in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, as well as countless other races – including Iran 2009.

When ballots are counted in secret (or, in many cases, not counted at all), democracy is dangerously imperilled. Lucky for Minnesotans, that wasn’t the case up there, even if it meant some eight months without proper representation in the US Congress. It was worth the wait.

Transparency was no match for the conspiracy theorists, including the RSCC, the head of the Republican party and even the Republican National Lawyers Association, who embarrassingly joined the black helicopter crowd in touting evidence-free claims of Franken’s “efforts to steal a seat in the United States Senate”.

Coleman, of course, was entitled to his contest, though it quickly became a desperate comedy of errors for the ousted Republican. His election contest began with a presentation of doctored evidence and concluded with the revelation of hidden legal notes and witnesses. The more he challenged the election and the counting of previously rejected absentee ballots, the wider Franken’s margin of victory grew.

The hard-fought post-election contest was understandable, of course. It’s a pity that Democrats don’t fight like hell for each and every vote they’re entitled to (yes, I’m speaking to you, John Kerry, and too many of your colleagues, or would-be colleagues.) Franken’s victory will now offer the Democrats a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, following the recent party jump by former Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter.

Minnesota’s law is a good one, but as with any law, there is no guarantee it won’t be abused, as Coleman has done for so many months by filing specious challenges, flipping and flopping on ballots he first fought to keep from being counted, only to change his mind later in hopes of having them counted after all, once it appeared he was on the losing side of the democratic draw.

And what of those infamous claims of Democratic “voter fraud” by all of those Acorn voters? After the most detailed, ballot-by-ballot, voter-by-voter analysis of an election likely in the history of the country, surely the Republicans would be able to show at least one case of fraud committed by their favourite bogey-man community organising, voter-registration group, right? After all, Acorn managed to register more than 42,000 new voters in Minnesota in the last election cycle. With all the claims of voter fraud being committed by the group, surely this election, of all elections, would be where evidence of all that fraud would finally be revealed for all to see, no? Um, no. Apparently not.

Not a single allegation of Acorn-related voter fraud was presented by the Republicans throughout the entire eight-month contest, even in an election in which just a few hundred votes separated winner from loser. The closest anybody came to presenting evidence of such fraud was when Coleman’s own witness admitted that he hadn’t signed his ballot, and that it had been forged by his girlfriend. Coleman fought to have that ballot, and others that were also illegally submitted, accepted in the final tally. So much for the Democratic voter fraud canard. If nothing else, this election once again revealed the Republican claims of voter fraud to be amongst the biggest frauds in modern American elections. Transparency has a way of doing that.

Despite his concession speech this afternoon, Coleman could still try his luck at the US supreme court, and given the wild-card make-up of that body, anything could happen, I suppose. The law has little to do with it, it seems (see 2000′s Bush v Gore). But the story here is that democracy only works when every citizen is allowed to participate both in the casting and – as importantly – in the counting of the ballots.

When democracy is visible to all, it works. When it becomes buried behind secrecy, insider tabulations and computerised black boxes, the very basis of our system of government is put dangerously at stake.

Transparency wins again. Along with the voters of Minnesota. Nice to see the voters win one for a change. Now if Barack Obama puts his money where his mouth is and delivers some of the transparency to the American people that he once promised, we might stand a chance at rebuilding this country. That appears a difficult fight at this time. But the results, if we can get them, just as in Minnesota, will be worth every moment of that fight.