There’s still a possibility that Democrats will have a filibuster-proof Senate majority in the 111th Congress:
In a strange turn of events, the Democrats’ pursuit of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate — left for dead after last week’s election results — is now back on course.
The road to 60 seats will now go through an Anchorage election office, the Minnesota state courts, a runoff in Georgia next month and, ultimately, a tense caucus meeting next week in which Democrats must deal with a renegade lawmaker who is making noise about crossing the aisle to join Republicans.
“Let me beat you to the punch: Will we get 60 seats?” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, cutting off reporters yesterday before they could ask the question everyone wants answered. “It’s possible, but unlikely.”
This seemed impossible last week, when Democrats appeared to gain six seats, to reach 57 for the 111th Congress starting in January, failing to secure a filibuster-proof majority for President-elect Barack Obama.
Now the terrain has changed in the three remaining undecided Senate races, where Republican incumbents finished ahead on election night but local rules have given Democrats the chance to add one to three seats to their majority.
In somewhat of a twist, Alaska now seems the easiest of the races to call. Now that Mark Begich has taken a lead in the vote count, it seems fairly obvious that any chances that Ted Stevens can win this race are gone. In Georgia, there will be a runoff election on December 2nd that will essentially be a test of which side has a better get-out-the-vote operation.
And then, there’s Minnesota:
The most legally complex battle is in Minnesota, where a recount process is about to start amid echoes of the controversial Florida 2000 presidential recount. Democrat Al Franken remains 206 votes behind Sen. Norm Coleman (R). More than 24,000 ballots that electronically recorded votes in the presidential race but did not record any vote in the Coleman-Franken contest will now be examined, and legal challenges have been lodged. Hundreds of lawyers on both sides are volunteering to help resolve the dispute.
This one isn’t going to be resolved any time soon. Democrats are already accusing Republicans of trying to stop votes from being counted, and Franken’s plan for victory apparently focuses on the so-called “undervotes”:
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — An Associated Press analysis of votes in the tight, still-to-be decided race for a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota shows that most ballots lacking a recorded choice in the election were cast in counties won by Democrat Barack Obama.
The finding could have implications for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, who are headed for a recount separated by the thinnest of margins — a couple of hundred votes, or about 0.01 percent.
About 25,000 ballots statewide carried votes for president but not for the Senate race. Although some voters might have intentionally bypassed the race, others might have mismarked their ballot, or optical scanning machines might have misread them.
A recount due to begin Nov. 19 will use manual inspection to detect such ballots.
As Ed Morrissey notes, however, the fact that a ballot shows a vote for Barack Obama and no vote in the Senate race doesn’t mean that the person casting the ballot intended to vote for Al Franken:
We saw this dynamic all through the election season. Franken consistently ran far behind Obama in Minnesota. Some Obama voters supported Coleman, and some supported Dean Barkley as an alternative. Some apparently decided not to support anyone at all. The notion that a significant difference in support between Obama and Franken amounts to some sort of malfeasance or frustrated voter intent is sheer fantasy.
Voters have a right not to cast votes in a particular race, which is why the optical-scan tabulators do not check for “undervotes”. In fact, “undervotes” do not exist; they’re a myth. When voters choose not to support a candidate, they don’t cast votes for the candidate, and if they don’t vote at all in a race, that’s intentional. If they intended to vote in a race, they had ample opportunity to do so.
And counting their ballots based on the way some election officials thinks they should have voted is nothing short of voter fraud.
So where does this leave the Democrats ?
Well, they seen to have a definite pickup in Alaska and at least a possibility of a win in Georgia’s runoff election. Minnesota seems more of a tossup but I’m betting that Norm Coleman will eke out a win there.
That would leave the Democrats with a 58 or 59 seat majority, which includes Independents Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman. It may not be a filibuster proof majority, but it’s darn close and it’s more likely than not that the Democrats would be able to peel off one or two Republicans to stop a filibuster when necessary.
