Now this is funny. In the Minnesota Senate trial, the Coleman campaign is now accusing the Franken team of cherry-picking votes.
Coleman spokesman Mark Drake told Minnesota Public Radio that Franken’s revised list of rejected absentee ballots, which are being submitted for review and potential counting, is skewed towards Franken-supporters. “The time has come for all the valid votes of Minnesotans to count, not just the ones that favor one candidate over another,” said Drake, projecting a high-minded image of small-d democracy.
Keep in mind that the Coleman camp insisted early on in this trial that they weren’t cherry-picking, and for all they knew they might have been advocating on behalf of unopened votes for Franken. But during the trial, they’ve been very clearly revealed to have cherry-picked their own votes. And local newspapers have shown how tilted his own list is.
A statement from Franken lawyer Marc Elias, provided to TPMDC, seemed to acknowledge that his own side is doing the same thing — but that’s only so they can compete with Coleman: “As I’m sure you’re aware by now from multiple independent analyses, the other side offered the court a heavily cherry-picked list of pro-Coleman votes. What we’ve done in our counterclaim is restore a balance of equality to the universe.”
For what it’s worth, after watching this whole trial I don’t personally see any problem with a campaign engaging in cherry-picking, as long as the judges are refereeing the process in an unbiased manner. If anything, the campaigns have a responsibility to do it. The problem here is the tendency of one side to be less than honest about what’s going on, and to turn around and lob moralistic accusations at the other.
