Coleman to Contest Election

After listening to the coverage on MPR

I see that Coleman has decided to contest the election. Although this is completely in his right (up to 7 days after canvas board certification) this doesn't seem to be a very good political move. His chances of overturning the decisions in his favor are pretty small and even if he gets both decisions in his favor, he wold have a large deficit to over come. having votes be in his favor 2 to 1. There is not much room to gain those votes.
It will be very hard for him to win this election, and even harder for him to serve again without skepticism. It will be good to see what the lawsuit decisions to do the race, but frankly from what I have heard Minnesotans are sick of this race and want a quick conclusion to it. If Coleman decides to draw out the seating of Al Franken, it will most certainly be to the decrement of his political future.

Franken Wins according to Canvas Board and SoS...But more to follow

"Al Franken was declared the winner over Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) in the Minnesota Senate race, but the Coleman campaign has announced it will be contesting the results in a post-election challenge." says Politico.


My analysis:
-Basically here is how it rolls out. Franken is 225 votes ahead after the recount. That is nearly a 1000 vote swing from election night projections. The recount looks to be transparent conducted by non-partisan county election officials a TRI-partisan canvas board that included 2 Republicans (appointed by Pawlenty) and 2 Independents and only 1 Democrat (SoS Mark Ritchie). There doesn't seem to be a lot of avenues for Coleman to sue. There is a current suit by the Coleman campaign over a contested 654 votes, which neither county auditors, the canvas board or the Franken campaign. In the MN Supreme Court decision earlier, it stated that all concerned parties must agree. The lack of a real decision by the court probably suggests that the suit won't get any real post-election differing results.

Even hypothetically, if Coleman gets the 654 votes included in the recount, and even further sues for the 133 votes that he claims were double counted, the problem is he would still have to net at least 225 votes. If both decisions are in his favor that only leaves 787 votes. Many didn't believe Franken would be up by such a large margin, but he is. This is statistically very difficult. Coleman would have to get 65% of the votes. That is very very dificult.
Chances are he wont get those decisions, and even if he does he would hve to get a very large margin of them. So at this point it looks like Franken is an almost certain winner.

Time to start cheering.