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In the race for stupid, Minnesota is sure to come out ahead as the nation focuses on the Norm Coleman-Al Franken U.S. Senate recount.
While Florida had its dimpled chads, Minnesota has trumped the country with faulty optical ballot scanners.
Former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer put these machines, with a history of errors, into place in 2006. These are the same machines that a Michigan election official discovered don’t always tabulate ballots correctly.
In a race with 2.9 million voters, the two major candidates are about 300 votes apart.
While weeks of recounting and ballot challenging don’t seem to be shedding any light on which candidate won the election, why couldn’t we just save ourselves a few million dollars and declare them both losers?
Neither candidate got 50 percent of the vote.
I know government doesn’t have any interest in being efficient, but an action like that and a governor’s appointment would save us Minnesotans a lot of embarrassment. Every week some voting official’s error comes to light that makes this state look inept.
It started out with some election official finding a pile of ballots in the back seat of a car. I have a messy car, but I’d know if something that large was adding to my clutter.
Now a Ramsey County worker found almost 200 hundred votes that never got counted.
While Coleman has never lost his very thin lead, most headlines in newspapers read like Franken is going to win.
No matter who wins this election, he will be accused of stealing the election because many voters didn’t vote for either Franken or Coleman. Nearly 500,000 voters voted for Dean Barkley. While the Independence Party candidate ran a distant third to Coleman and Franken, he took votes from both major candidates when Democrats and Republicans didn’t like their party’s candidate.
Barkley was in charge of Jesse Ventura’s successful 1998 gubernatorial campaign. Some say that was another Minnesota embarrassment to have a professional wrestler win a gubernatorial race.
It won’t be long and the Minnesota election jokes will be circulating. The jokes will get here before the recount is finished.
It may take a long time for this issue to go away.
I don’t think Franken is much of a comedian, but he’s now part of the biggest joke in the country.
Good peopleCafeteria Catholics are good people. So are Lutherans, Baptists, Jews and all people of faith.
A frequent letter writer and member of the local inter-faith counsel, Tom Parlin, added a breath of fresh air to religious intolerance of some letter writers. I’m afraid a bunch of that negativity was inspired by me.
Like Parlin, I grew up in a pre-Vatican Catholic church that taught very little flexibility and almost no acceptance of anything but the Catholic doctrine. While my issues and attitude was focused on politics, my intolerance wasn’t on faith, but on the issue of respecting life.
The Catholic church has made great strides on its intolerance, but it’s not moving fast enough for some Catholics who change their belief rather than follow their faith.
Parlin acknowledges, “The Catholic Church has a strong position on abortion.” He also added, “no one in our Diocese is being excommunicated for their choice of candidate in the last election.”
Most importantly, Parlin stated, “let us continue to respect one another despite our differences and acknowledge what we have in common in our beliefs.”
I can’t improve on that statement. I only wish I would have said it.
It’s a workshopIt shouldn’t surprise me that every week someone asks me, “What’s that you’re building onto your garage?”
With nearly 10,000 cars traveling Huff Street every day, my 11-foot addition has made some people curious. With a blessing from my wife, the Winona Variance Board and my neighbors, I was able to build my seventh woodworking shop.
It’s too small, but what shop is big enough? A security system was a waste of money because even I can’t find anything in it.
You are welcome to a tour anytime the light is on. I’ll enjoy the interruption.
Galewski is the retired editor and Opinion page editor of the Winona Daily News. His views don’t necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper. If you have an idea or tip about a Winona issue, call Jim at (507) 452-3960. His e-mail is editor@luminet.net.
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virgo wrote on Dec 5, 2008 10:12 AM:
The voting official's errors don't make the state "look" inept - it IS inept when it comes to handling ballots after polls close. "