should Al Franken receive back pay?

[minionofmidas]

Selected, not elected.

Now, I disagree with your opinion on the Minnesota Senate election, but do you feel this way about Bush in 2000 as well?

I feel they should have recounted all of the ballots.

But didn't the news agencies do that anyway and showed Bush won?

Actually, no, that's not *quite* what they showed.

That's the headline they put on it though, because they felt the country ought to Move On.

EDIT: There were several such studies, and their results vary (another's findings are similar in gist, but with different numbers. In a third, the results are actually reversed - Gore wins only on the strictest standard here). However, these other two appear to be based on samples.)

    * Lenient standard. Gore by 332 votes.

"Lenient" here means any ballot with an obvious mark at just one presidential candidate.

    * Palm Beach standard. Gore by 242 votes.

Under these rules, a not wholly detached but obviously marked chad is counted if the same thing occurs several times on the same ballot.

    * Two-corner standard. Bush by 407 votes.

What the media called "hanging chads". Apparently these came heavily from some strong Bush counties.

    * Strict standard. Bush by 152 votes.

The official result minus counting mistakes, basically. Only chads that fall out counted.

So, basically, as tied as Minnesota.
Of course, taking into account the 10s of thousands of wrongly spoilt Duval and Palm Beach ballots moves Gore's margin of victory to well outside the margin of error.
Ignoring for now the thousands of Palm Beach ballots attributed to the wrong candidate altogether because there's no way of correcting that or knowing how many they were, exactly. And the effects of the fraudulent voter list purge because, again, its effects cannot be quantified with any degree of certainty. And the couple of dozen votes Bush probably lost due to the wrongful early call while polls were still open in the Panhandle.

[minionofmidas]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Not to mention the hundreds, of individuals denied voting rights at the polls based on "felony conviction records" which turned out to be 100% erroneous (e.g. a totally different person with the same name as a convicted felon; felony arrest resulted in misdemeanor conviction making them legally eligible to vote under Florida law). The disenfranchised were mostly African-American and lower income voters. Many of these "records of felony convictions were provided by other states to the FL Sec. of State--Katherine Harris, who could forget--before the election. Most were provided by one state in particular--you guessed it: Texas.

There's a special place in hell for Karl Rove.....

I listed that. See above.
It's impossible to say how many of these people tried to vote. It's even impossible to say how many were really removed from the voter rolls - the SoS' files were so large and so obviously (to an expert - not that one was at hand in all counties) error-ridden that many counties just refused point-blank to act on them.