WARNING: THIS IS A PROCESS BOOK!
Now, most process books are as boring as watching US Senate proceedings on C-SPAN 2, but this is the rare exception. Jay Weiner was an on hiatus sportswriter who was writing for the MinnPost, which is a Minnesota news blog. OK, I can hear you saying "Well I read ‘Recounting Minnesota’, that is all I need to know." If you said that you would be wrong! Recounting Minnesota brought us the raw, snarky emotions of people who were seeing and reporting on things as they happened This Is Not Florida brings us the calm sober reflection of most all of the participants of one of the most engrossing political events of the 21st Century. These 2 books represent distinct facets of the diamond in the rough that became the Great Minnesota Recount. If you have not read either of these books on the Minnesota recount, I would read them in this order. 1) This is not Florida, and 2) Recounting Minnesota. I wish that This Is Not Florida had been printed before Recounting Minnesota because that dead tree media style of reporting would have helped someone like me; who was not involved with the 2008 Minnesota election, understand that raw emotion that I saw through so much of Recounting Minnesota.
I did learn a lot from This Is Not Florida. For example, the Franken campaign had a recount strategy in place by mid-October, and they knew exactly what they wanted to do. They also had a bunch of election law legal specialists ready to go long before election day. I also learned the Coleman campaign felt that this recount was Florida 2.0, and could be run just like that monstrosity was. In December 2008, the Coleman legal team went before the Minnesota Supreme Court to request the Court to enjoin the State Canvassing Board from looking at mistakenly rejected absentee ballots Roger Magnuson made a statement; which he stated the "the Canvassing Board...accepted an invitation, we believe, to go to Florida." This brought the judicial equivalent of Mount Vesuvius from Justice Paul H. Anderson, a Republican appointee to the Court:
"Counsel...I know you have been to Florida. This is not Florida, and I am not terribly receptive to your telling us we are going to Florida and we’re comparing to that. This is Minnesota, we’ve got a case in Minnesota, argue the case in Minnesota."
That was a close as the judiciary gets to launching cannonballs across the bows of wayward advocates. Alarm bells should have been going off in the Coleman office after this, they were given a large life line, and they refused to grasp it. I also learned that the little things matter. We meet Ms. Angela Bohmann, a friend of one of the Franken attorneys. Her daughter Claire, an out of state college student, but a registered Minnesota voter had her absentee ballot rejected, but Mrs. Bohmann proved that her daughter had followed all relevant law when she voted. This got the team to thinking how many other people like Claire Bohmann had legally valid absentee ballots rejected by mistake. This started the Franken Absentee Ballot Chase Program. This turned a 215 vote Coleman lead on Election Night, to a 312 vote Franken lead by the end of this long and winding road. I think a turning point of the recount, was a November 30th story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled "For Franken, a Math Problem" In effect, this article said that it would be near impossible for Franken to overturn the Coleman lead. Reading this the Beltway powerhouses, and the money men and women were beginning to get cold feet. After being reassured by Stephanie Schriock, the Franken campaign manager, they started releasing the data that they had compiled after each days counting. These figures were the most accurate data coming out of anywhere. In the end the Coleman campaign, was out organized, out fundraised, and out dataed by a man who he derided as a comedian. To those of you who think the election was stolen, and you were cheated out of a Senate seat let me leave you with a statement in the epilogue written by Jay Weiner:
But, the last time I looked, the (Canvassing) Board included 2 Republican Supreme Court Justices, including the Chief Justice, who did the Minnesotan right thing: count uncounted votes, not " disqualified ballots." ...And stolen? If so, it was theft in plain view of a dozen judges, four of whom sat on the state Canvassing Board, the three-judge trial panel picked by the Supreme Court, and a five judge Minnesota Supreme Court, with three judges appointed by Republican governors. All thieves, no doubt.