Minnesota Senate Race: Final or Farce?

Yesterday, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie ceritified the U.S. Senate race for Minnesota, declaring Democrat Al Franken the winner after overcoming his opponent, incumbent Norm Coleman, by 225 votes. While Coleman is scheduled to hold a press conference in St. Paul today at 3pm to publicly declare his course of action in possible legal battles, it now looks almost assured that Al Franken will be seated later this week as the junior Senator from Minnesota.

With over 5,000 votes being thrown out, 200 simply lost throughout various precincts, and another 1,000-2,000 still hanging on to a slim possibility of inclusion in the final count, the bigger question seeks out not the winner, but rather if the State of Minnesota has upheld its responsiblities to count all votes and ensure our republican democracy. And it was long ago that the press stopped talking about the other candidates in the race, most notably Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley who garnered over 15 percent of the vote totals.

Instead of the constant bickering that has dominated the two major party candidates bid for the Senate, citizens should demand better representation in Congress. Franken and Coleman were often indiscernable in their overall views that Government is the ultimate power and that all people are dependent and subservient to its agenda. The only real difference between the two was in personality, and like the U.S. Presidential race, it sadly ended up determining everything in the end.

After all this recount hub-bub, many Minnesotans after hearing these new surprising results can only say, "Who cares!?" For whichever policy puppet lands in the riches of Senatorial gold, it is already assured that the real loser is the Minnesotan.