Here. It is time progression of the meeting events, starting at the bottom, up.
No "Al won" or "Norm won" or this thing favors that person, none of that, just events as they happened, lawyers going unquoted. Enough ballots to swamp the gap, challenged and "should have been counted but wrongly rejected absentee" categories; but to beat the gap the Franken margin on those would have to be quite favorable.
But what of all those "correctly" rejected absentee ballots. It is troubling that technicalities and deficiencies can disenfranchise a vote. Surely people should not screw up, and be mistake free, but in the real world it is not always the case.
I see arguable grounds for the Senate to say no sufficient showing of a victor, with a refusal to seat either Franken or Coleman short of holding a runoff. The power seems there for the Senate to say that, they cannot order a runoff, but they can say if you in Minnesota want the seat occupied and the vote yours, it is what we'd require before seating anyone. Powerful suggestion, even if jurisdiction to order something is absent. There would be a runoff if that were the order. But could Barkley participate, i.e., hold a complete re-run, vs. a runoff, and what if that question were to be litigated?
