A scant 34 weeks after Election Night, the 2008 election season has concluded.
Yes, you can close the books on Minnesota's epic Senate race; incumbent Norm Coleman conceded today. Yes, already. Why the hurry? Well, in the end, the bitter, bitter end, Coleman was deemed to have received fewer votes than challenger Al Franken. Yup, THAT Al Franken. (Oh yes, he is good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, just barely enough people like him.)
Granted, Coleman did own a 477-vote lead the morning after the election. That shrunk to 192 a month later after the hand recount. A phase of ballot-challenging ensued, which flipped the margin to Franken +251 and a final review of those ballot challenges settled on Franken owning a 312-vote advantage.
Messy? Uncertain? You bet. But that's why they have recounts. So you can re-count the votes, even more carefully than before, and guess what? The numbers change when you recount them.
Is the outcome "fair" to Coleman? Probably not... but a Franken victory is just as "fair." If you ran this whole convoluted scenario -- Election Night to tonight -- 101 times on a computer simulation, I get the impression that each candidate would win 50 times and one tie would occur. When the margin of error is in the triple digits in a 2.5-million basket of votes, some shrinkage and leakage and foul play is bound to occur. (I'm leaving out the fact that Coleman's legal team is generally agreed to have been incompetent. In my make-believe simulation, the interested parties hire legal teams of varying skill. It's a very fancy imaginary simulation. Obama still wins every time, though.)
Oh yeah, Coleman's the Republican. Franken's the Democrat. That gives the D's 60 Senators, theoretically enough to quash filibusters. With that in mind, let's hop over to part 2.
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