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During the semester, I shall post course material and students will comment on it. Students are also free to comment on any aspect of American politics, either current or historical. There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges. This blog is on the open Internet, so post nothing that you would not want a potential employer to see.Syllabus is at https://gov20h.blogspot.com/2025/08/gov-20h-syllabus-fall-2025.html

Friday, November 21, 2008

Contested votes in Minnesota, and Democratic dominance in Washington


God bless public radio, as Minnesota Public Radio has put photos of challenged ballots in the Franken-Coleman recount fight on their website. These ballots are awesome, and you can spend endless time trying to decipher a voter's intent. I do not envy the Canvassing Board. Hat tip to the consistently excellent Economist blog, Democracy in America.

If Franken can pull out the win in Minnesota (and there's evidence that undervotes, when hand counted, usually favor Democrats), all of the attention will go to Georgia for the special election between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin.

Republicans in their last-decade heyday were never this close to Washington dominance. I don't believe it's good for the country that one party can steamroll legislation through Congress. I would rather Washington be in a permanent state of deadlock, passing nothing, because I believe Washington has a reverse Midas touch - things it touches become instantly worse for the country. So for these reasons I would vote for Martin if I was a Georgia voter in December.

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