Roland Burris, Jan. 5, 2009: “The Lord put his hands on the governor and said, ‘This is the person that has to go to Washington.’”

Michele Bachmann, Oct. 14, 2006: “He called me to run for United States Congress”

But isn’t Sarlin missing something here?

These books are intended to be satire. Whether you think they succeed or not, they hardly evidence how Franken might act upon becoming a senator. And most of the Franken critics that Sarlin cites — Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly — are hardly mainstream conservatives that swing voters are likely to take their cues from. Rather, they’re political pugilists whose sole purpose is to rile up the conservative base (and make boatloads of money).

If anything, the Senate campaign in Minnesota proved that merely attacking Al Franken as an ideolog and an interloper is not enough to convince voters to back the Republican candidate. Norm Coleman’s campaign attacked Franken incessantly throughout the contest — and it doesn’t look to have been a very successful strategy.

Cleary, assistant chief judge at Ramsey County District Court, identifies himself as a WSJ subscriber of three decades’ standing who doesn’t always agree with the newspaper’s editorials but was particularly disappointed by this one, which he finds “long on partisan tone and short on accurate reporting.”

Read Cleary’s complete letter after the jump.

Dear Sirs:

As a subscriber of your newspaper for almost three decades, I don’t expect to always agree with your editorial viewpoint. Yet I am nevertheless very disappointed when I read an editorial long on partisan tone and short on accurate reporting.

As a member of the Minnesota State Canvassing Board, appointed pursuant to statute, I have attended all nine Board open meetings held the past seven weeks. I am knowledgeable about the proceedings as well as Minnesota’s election laws. Our members (two Supreme Court Justices, two District Court Judges, and Secretary of State Ritchie) came from all political backgrounds, openly expressed our opinions at the meetings, and can hardly be accurately described as “meek,” unless you mean “meek” by New York in-your-face standards. Your groundless attack on Secretary Ritchie reflects poorly on the author; Ritchie worked assiduously at avoiding partisanship in these proceedings.

As to the Board as a whole, all of our major votes were unanimous. We consistently followed the law in limiting our involvement to a non-adjudicative role, declining both candidate’s attempts to expand our mandate. Further, we painstakingly reviewed each challenged ballot, some more than once, to confirm that we were ruling in a consistent manner. One can only assume, based on the tone of the editorial, the numerous inaccuracies, and the over-the-top slam at Al Franken (”tainted and undeserving”?) that had Norm Coleman come out on top in this recount, the members of the Board would have been praised as “strong-willed, intelligent, and perceptive.” We won’t hold our breath waiting for that editorial to appear.

Edward J. Cleary

Assistant Chief Judge

Second Judicial District

Minnesota State Canvassing Board

Elias dismissed the Coleman suit, which alleges mistakes in the recently concluded statewide recount, as being without merit — “essentially the same thin gruel, warmed over leftovers we’ve all been served over the last few weeks.”

Elias took note of one ”new twist” — a Coleman contention that some ballots should be declared invalid because election judges failed to initial them. Otherwise, he dismissed Coleman’s allegations — double-counted duplicate ballots, missing ballots, potentially valid but twice-rejected absentee ballots — as old and in some cases disproven news.

“When you lose by 225 votes, you have to go mining for votes somewhere,” Elias said, calling the lawsuit’s renewed claims about 133 ballots missing in Minneapolis as the equivalent of believing the earth is flat.

“We are on the precipice of the next phase,” said Elias, an East Coast resident who may have hoped to retreat to warmer climes by now. He predicted the election contest — in which a three-judge panel hears complaints about the vote count — would begin with procedural motions concerning the court’s jurisdiction, the scope of its review, and how the contest will proceed.

Both sides would raise the issue of additional ballots that could be reviewed, he said, but nothing will change the result announced Monday, “a historic day … when Al Franken was certified the winner by the State Canvassing Board.”

The reason: “There are certainly not the votes there.”

“There is no one certified as the winner of this race,” referring to an election certification that’s separate from the result certified Monday by the State Canvassing Board that favored Democratic rival Al Franken by 225 votes. “I believe I’m going to win,” Coleman said.

Speaking to supporters and reporters at the State Office Building in St. Paul, Coleman said that “a true, accurate and valid result” was more important than resolving the two-month-old disputed election soon. “Something greater than expediency is at stake,” he said. “This is not just about me.”

Coleman’s call for a result that is “true, accurate and valid” seemed to answer Franken’s description of the recount as “long, fair and … thorough” — made during a Monday public statement in which Franken declared “victory.”

Here’s the prepared text of Coleman’s statement, released just after Tuesday’s press event:

ST. PAUL - Our Declaration of Independence states that government “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.” Our government of laws is only as just as the elections that determine who make the decisions that affect us all. So we all have responsibility to make sure each vote counts in every election so the purity of democracy in our nation can be preserved and enhanced on our watch.

On November 4, 2008, nearly 3 million Minnesotans cast their votes for the United States Senate. The vast majority of those votes were clear and validly cast. Obviously, it was an extremely close vote, so Minnesota law required an automatic hand recount.

I want to express my deep appreciation to all of the election officials and volunteers who helped to make this election successful. I also want to thank the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been involved in this recount process for their work during a busy family time of the year for doing the work to get us to this point in the process.

But in the wisdom of Minnesota’s excellent election law, the local recount actions to date and those of the canvassing board are steps in the process of reaching a clear and unambiguous result all the people can accept as final. But as of today, not every valid vote has been counted and some have been counted twice.

So today I am announcing that I’ve instructed my legal team to file an election contest according to Minnesota law. Until these issues are settled, any attempt to seat someone who is not properly certified ignores the law, violates Senate precedent and usurps the will of the people of Minnesota.

There are several vital issues that must be resolved for the sake of this and future elections. Let me be very specific.

When double counted votes are included in a recount, an accurate and valid count cannot be obtained. When there are more votes counted in a single precinct than votes cast on the night of the election, an accurate and valid count cannot be obtained. When hundreds, if not thousands, of absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and still not included in the recount, an accurate and valid count cannot been obtained.

We are filing this contest to be absolutely sure that every valid vote was counted and no one’s voted was counted more than anyone else’s. The only way to do that is to guarantee that clear standards were applied fairly and uniformly throughout every single precinct of this state.

Under Minnesota Law there can be no valid election certificate issued if an election contest is filed. An election contest is the exact remedy the law provides to ensure that this recount and the associated inconsistencies that come with it are properly examined and properly resolved.

That’s what the Supreme Court said when it ruled the wrongly rejected absentee ballots that have still not been counted should be part of a contest. And it’s what members of the Canvassing Board communicated when they said they did not have the power in a recount to deal with the double counting of original and duplicate ballots.

While I understand there is a desire by a small number of people to simply move on, something greater than expediency is at stake here. As Americans we believe that every valid vote should count and that everybody’s vote is equally to everyone else’s.

Democracy is not a machine. It’s run by people working to obey the law as best they can. Sometimes it’s messy and inconvenient, and reaching the best conclusion is never quick because speed is not the first objective: fairness is. I’ve directed my team to move as quickly as possible to resolve these issues. But we will not permit the full process to be shortcut. That would only cast greater doubt and uncertainty over the final result.

A six year term is a long, long time. Crucial decisions will be made during that period on the economy, national security and the rights of all Americans. Minnesotans deserve 100% confidence that their Senator was fairly elected by all the people.

Speaking personally for just a moment: it has been an enormous privilege for me and my family to be involved in serving the people of Minnesota for over 30 years, the last six in the United State Senate. I hope to keep doing so. I have been humbled by the privilege given to me, but I want to make it clear: nobody is indispensible. It’s the will of the people that really matters.

This is not just about me. The eyes of the nation are on the state that we love and we need to show them that Minnesota has done everything we can to make sure that we protect every voter’s right. At this moment, I may not have a working office in D.C. or in St. Paul, but I still have my voice in Minnesota, and I certainly plan to use it.

We need to get this right for all of us: a true, accurate and valid result of the Minnesota United States Senate Recount so all Minnesotans can have a Senator with the full credibility to lead and serve.

Thank you and God bless.

Harry Reid (WDCpix)

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, is the latest to call for Norm Coleman to concede in Minnesota’s Senate race. While he’s technically correct that Coleman, the incumbent for office, is no longer a senator, the Nevada Democrat’s statement, given during his inaugural speech at the start of the 111th Congress today, seemed to go out of the way to emphasize the point. He said:

“This is a difficult time for former Sen. Coleman and his family, and he is entitled to the opportunity to concede this election graciously. But we cannot let this drag on forever,” Reid said. “I hope that former Sen. Coleman and all of our Republican colleagues will choose to respect the will of the people of Minnesota.“

Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale and former Minnesota governor Arne Carlson, who served as a Republican but now considers himself an independent, both urged Coleman to step aside.

In winning the most votes by a slim margin, Franken is “tainted,” according to Republican state Sen. Geoff Michel. And while Michel won’t find an argument with that assertion from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers (from whom he may have taken inspiration for his choice of words), history suggests that a slim winning margin won’t hurt Franken at the polls six years from now.

Eric Ostermeier, writing at his Smart Politics blog from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, takes a look back at past victors in Minnesota elections to the U.S. Senate and finds that “there is virtually no difference in the re-election success rate of those who won narrowly and those who won by large margins.”

In fact, Ostermeier reports, senators who won by double-digit margins did slightly worse in the next election cycle than those who won by narrower margins. His conclusion:

In short, if past is prologue (and all things being equal), should Franken prevail and choose to run in 2014, he would seem to have about a 67 percent chance of winning reelection, as 15 of 22 Senators have done before him.

If it seems a bit early (or even a bit nutty) to run the numbers already on Franken’s chances in 2014 on a day when senators of his own party thought better of even trying to seat him a first time — well, it was early. A date-stamp reveals that Ostermeier posted his electoral research on Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 2:38 a.m.

Al Franken (WDCpix)

In the first week of the 111th Congress, Democrats already have themselves in a pickle.

Party leaders hoping to block the appointment of Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate are pointing to the same legal technicality that Republicans hope to use to keep Minnesotan Al Franken (D) from taking a seat of his own.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Under wildly different circumstances, neither Burris nor Franken has received official state certification to fill the seats — Burris because his appointment came under a cloud of scandal; Franken because his opponent has contested the razor-thin election results. As the new Congress prepares to launch with swearing-in ceremonies Tuesday afternoon, Republican leaders hope to use the lack-of-certification argument to block Franken. Some political experts say that Democratic leaders should tread carefully if they plan to refuse Burris for the same reason — or risk of falling victim to their own standards.

“Inconsistency can be a political problem for Democrats given how delicate this issue is,” Julian E. Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University, said in an email. “The Burris issue is front page news so this is not a decision that can be done and hidden … [I]f they are going to depend on a technicality to keep Burris out, they can’t ignore a similar technicality with Franken.”

Burris, a former Illinois attorney general, was appointed to the coveted Senate post last month by Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested just weeks before for alleged attempts to auction off the upper-chamber slot. Democratic leaders — including Obama — have vowed to block Burris from taking the seat on account of the scandal surrounding Blagojevich. Illinois Sec. of State Jesse White on Monday provided party leaders with some justification when he refused to sign Burris’s election certification papers. White, who has repeatedly said he won’t certify any appointee of the embattled governor, cited a desire “to be true to my word.”

Undeterred, Burris said Monday that his appointment is perfectly legal, and the controversy swirling around it is an invention of the media. He said he has every intention of visiting the Capitol Tuesday to be sworn in.

“I am going there to be seated,” Burris said at an animated press conference as he was leaving Chicago for Washington Monday. “I am the junior senator from the state of Illinois. That’s all I can say.”

If Senate Democratic leaders turn him away at the chamber door, Burris added, “My lawyers will take it from there, and we’ll see what happens.”

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s state canvassing board on Monday certified Franken as the winner of his contest by a 225-vote margin over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R). Coleman’s camp quickly vowed to file a lawsuit in Minnesota state court protesting the results. Minnesota state law prevents the election certification from becoming finalized until that legal process has ended.

Senate Republicans, led by GOP Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), have vowed to block Franken’s arrival until the lawsuit has played itself out. “There are a lot of questions about double-counted ballots, about absentee ballots that likely favor Norm Coleman that were refused to be counted by the canvassing board,” Cornyn told Fox News Monday. “These issues will all be worked out in court over the next few weeks. But, tomorrow, I do not think Al Franken will have a legal right to claim that Senate seat until all the votes are properly counted.”

Kathryn L. Pearson, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, said that, in light of the Burris episode, the Democrats’ success in seating Franken this week might hinge on how they present their argument.

“If the frame is about certification of elections, it does become complicated,” Pearson said. But if the frame is that the canvassing board has determined Franken the winner, she added, “then the case could be made that these are two very distinct situations.”

The Burris issue has become a thorn in the sides of Democrats, who are hoping to use a special provisional designation to solidify Franken’s spot in the upper chamber as quickly as possible — a designation granting all the voting and committee-assignment rights of the office, but making it easier to remove Franken if Coleman’s claims that he won are later discovered to be true.

Such a provisional designation is not without precedent. Following a tight Senate race in Louisiana in 1996, Democrat Mary Landrieu was seated “without prejudice” after her opponent brought charges of election fraud. (A Senate investigation found that the election irregularities were not enough to remove Landrieu from office. In November she was elected to her third term.)

Cornyn, who was recently elected to his second term, referred to such precedents as “ancient.”

In the eyes of some political experts, the entire episode is nothing more than a partisan jousting match with little lasting significance. Stephen Hess, a political scholar with the Brookings Institution, said the state-certification issue is “too inside-baseball” to resonate in any way that would foil the underlying plans of Democratic leaders.

“They’ll do what they want to do,” Hess said. “This thing is going to take a few days to play out — or a few weeks — but it really doesn’t have much political significance…It seems quite clear that very quickly there are going to be two new Democratic senators.”

Still, even Hess conceded that the arrival of Burris in Washington creates an unwelcome distraction for Democrats who’d hoped to use the momentum from November’s elections to move an enormous economic recovery package (among other party priorities) early this year.

“Blagojevich has put them in one hell of a bind,” Hess said. “It’s fascinating to watch them squirm their way out of it.”

Mike Lillis is the Congress Reporter for The Washington Independent.

Al Franken has emerged from the U.S. Senate recount with a 225-vote lead over incumbent Norm Coleman. The five-member State Canvassing Board unanimously certified the results at a hearing Monday afternoon. Roughly two months after the election — and following a painstaking statewide manual recount of nearly 3 million ballots — Franken received 1,212,431 votes, while Coleman was backed by 1,212,206 voters.

While the actions of the canvassing board would seem to suggest that the epic election contest is finally drawing to a close, the Coleman campaign immediately made it clear that they have no intention of conceding defeat. Attorney Tony Trimble announced at a press conference following the canvassing board meeting that they will file a lawsuit contesting the outcome of the contest. The Republican’s campaign believes that various voting improprieties — wrongly rejected absentee ballots, double-counted ballots and lost ballots — have tarnished the recount.

“Since the process is far from complete there can be no confidence in the current results of the United States Senate recount,” Trimble said. “We will file a contest within the next 24 hours to promptly correct those problems.”

The Franken campaign, not surprisingly, hailed the development. “Today is a great day for the people of Minnesota,” lawyer Marc Elias said. “I stand before you proudly as the attorney for the next Senator for the state, Senator-elect Al Franken;”

Franken himself declared victory in front of his Minneapolis condominium this afternoon. Reports out of Washington today suggested that the Senate will attempt to seat him tomorrow with the other freshman legislators. Republicans have vowed to prevent that from happening through a filibuster. In another unwelcome development for Coleman, his office was ordered shut and staff sent home at the direction of the Senate rules committee.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and the four other members of the canvassing board expressed satisfaction at the conduct of the state-mandated recount. “I think this recount has proven the wisdom and the strength of that system in an amazing way,” Ritchie said at the close of the meeting. “This didn’t just fall from the sky. People long before us built this system.”

But canvassing board member Eric Magnuson, chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, summed up the continuing ambiguity surrounding the ultimate outcome of the Senate contest. “I don’t think we’ve written the last chapter in this particular election,” he said.