www.ritchiefacts.com

The Minnesota senate recount if finally over and Al Franken* is now seated as a U.S. Senator. We now know who the "winner" is, but we'll never no who received the most votes.

What went wrong? There are two major issues that were never resolved.

• Dozens of precincts had more votes than registered voters. These were primarily were in areas that were heavily Democratic.
• Thousands of absentee ballots were tossed for technicalities. These technicalities are an important part of election law, and they were not uniformly enforced. In many blue counties, where Franken* had a 3-2 or better advantage, they weren't enforced at all. These counties allowed themselves to use discretion in following the law.

This brings us to Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. Ritchie was first elected in 2006, after being endorsed by ACORN and all the major labor unions in the state. Ritchie ran on the DFL ticket and touted himself as a non-Partisan. (For non-Minnesotans, the Minnesota Democratic Party uses the term DFL: Democratic-Farmer-Labor)

ACORN-Minnesota's Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie

During the recount Ritchie kept a low profile. In his few media appearances he kept repeating the mantra of "open and transparent." Fellow DFLers espoused the same thing in describing how the election recount was conducted.

To date, Ritchie has not explained why some precincts had more votes than voters. As of May ( after the case went to the Minnesota Supreme Court) the state wide voter registration roles had not been reconciled; they were off by 30,000. I'm not aware of any update to this figure.

Ritchie allowed the non-uniform method of counting absentee ballots to continued throughout the process, even though he was aware of problems early on. He failed to train judges in how to process absentee ballots before the election, and did nothing to mitigate the problem afterwards.

Franken* is in his office, and Ritchie needs to move out of his. He's up for re-election in 2010. The Minnesota GOP yesterday announced a new website: ritchiefacts.com

Keep in mind that the Franken*/Coleman recount isn't the only black cloud hanging over Ritchie's office. From his ties to ACORN to getting caught using his state office for campaign fundraising - Ritchie operates like a Chicago politician.