Proofiness - Charles Seife [49]
On election day, Minnesotans knew that the Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and his challenger, Al Franken, was going to be close. It had been an ugly campaign, and the candidates had been neck and neck for weeks. However, nobody predicted just how close it would be. The two would be separated by a few thousandths of a percent of the votes cast—just a tiny number of ballots would determine who won the race and who lost. As a result, lawyers from both parties descended on Minnesota to see if they could wring out an extra handful of votes for their candidate—or steal a few from their opponent—by whatever means necessary. Every single vote had to be fought over, as each one might mean the difference between victory and defeat. This is where the lizard people came in.
Our intrepid voter from Beltrami County did indeed write in a vote for lizard people for Senate as he did for the other offices, but there was an important difference. He didn’t bubble in the oval next to his write-in vote; instead, he messily filled in the oval next to Al Franken’s name. Initially the vote had been counted for Franken; when the ballot had been fed through the scanning machine, the scanner only spotted (and recorded) the Franken vote, ignoring the lizard people vote. But sharp-eyed Coleman partisans had spotted the write-in lizard people vote and argued that the ballot should be thrown out. After all, the voter had seemingly cast two votes—one for Al Franken and one for lizard people—in a race where you could only vote for one candidate. If so, this would invalidate the ballot; Franken would lose a vote. So should Franken keep his vote, or should he lose it? This was the question before a five-person canvassing board—four Minnesota judges along with the secretary of state—tasked with counting votes and certifying the winner of the election.
Of all the questions that came before the canvassing board, that of the lizard people was perhaps the most absurd. Even though it would seem to be beneath the dignity of the judges to argue about lizard people, there was in fact a legal issue at stake. If there truly was a legitimate vote cast for the lizard people in addition to the one for Al Franken, it should be counted as an overvote. If the vote wasn’t legitimate, it should go for Franken. So the question before the judges was: was the vote for lizard people legitimate?
Oddly enough, it didn’t matter that the oval next to the write-in candidate spot wasn’t bubbled in. Minnesota law is clear on that point: “If a voter has written the name of an individual in the proper place on a general or special election ballot a vote shall be counted for that individual whether or not the voter makes a mark . . . opposite the blank.” Thus the write-in vote for lizard people was valid, meaning the voter had overvoted and the ballot should be discarded. But nothing’s ever quite that simple.
Marc Elias, Franken’s perpetually sweaty lawyer, came up with a brilliant last-ditch argument to save the vote for Franken: he asserted that “lizard people” wasn’t a real person. Since the voter didn’t write the name of an actual individual in the write-in spot, the write-in vote shouldn’t be counted as genuine. That’s when the discussion got downright surreal. Coleman lawyers countered by insisting that “Lizard People” was a real person. All sense of decorum disappeared as the judges on the panel promptly started fighting among themselves.
“If it said ‘Moon Unit Zappa,’ would you say, ‘Oh, no, there is no such person as Moon Unit Zappa’?” asked judge Eric Magnuson. To drive the point home, he continued emphatically, “You don’t know that there isn’t someone named ‘Lizard People.’ You don’t. You and I don’t.”
Asked Judge Edward Cleary, “Isn’t ‘people’ plural? I mean, how do you have an individual named ‘people’?”
“Well,” countered Magnuson, “you could have a last name Sims.” Soon, Judge Kathleen Gearin chimed in: “I have to admit that I’ve had someone