Bouncing Reality Off Of A Skull

A friend of mine firmly believes that the evil Democrats are stealing the senatorial election in Minnesota.  He claims that (a) demanding a recount will not let the voter’s vote count, that (b) the Democrat’s are trying to throw out every Republican voter’s ballot, and (c) that the U.S. Supreme Court declared recounts unconstitutional back in 2000.  My attempted answers (I say attempted because they bounced off of his thick skull like psi off of a Thennanin’s skull (and if you get that allusion, you are as much an sci-fi geek as I am (and yes, that is a complement))) (in reverse order)? 

(c)  The SCOTUS merely overruled a state supreme court ruling saying that the time period allowed for the recount could be extended.  I also tried to explain that the reason the recount could not be completed in the state-mandated time period was because the Republicans had hired a riot in Miami.

(b)  Both the Franken and Coleman campaign are challenging about the same number of ballots.  Many of these have extraneous marks, double marks, marks with arrows, a fingerprint over one of the choices, or even no mark at all in any candidate’s oval.  As for trying to throw out every Republican’s ballot, I pointed out one of the tactics being used by Republicans to challenge ballots:  voter intent.  Take a gander at the video over a Greg Laden’s blog.  I will show him the video tomorrow.  I have a prediction, though.  He will say something along the lines of: “Well, the Democrats are doing the same thing, so it means nothing.”

And as for (a), I tried very hard to explain that when a vote is very, very close, a recount not only guarantees that the greatest number of votes (for any candidate) will be counted, but also guarantees (or as close to a guarantee as you can get in a democracy with the haphazard state voting rules here in the U.S.) that the person getting the most votes will actually win the election.

He still thinks that Al Franken is trying to steal the election.  He also claims to have seen documentary evidence that Obama’s Chicago ACORNs are helping (of course, he does not remember where he saw the evidence).   He is furious that the ‘liberal media’ is not documenting all the boxes of Franken votes suddenly ‘found’ in a car and the illegal ballots cast by illegal aliens registered by ACORN.   And he is also mentally rewriting history.

He told me today that Franken should take a leaf from George W’s playbook and, for the good of the country and democracy, should just accept the election day count and concede.  When he dropped that one on me, I just waked away.  It was either that or risk committing bodily violence upon a fellow human.