Good Thing Minnesota Has Someone in Charge Who Cares About Counting Every Vote

What happens or doesn't happen in Washington over the next two years may depend on who wins the Minnesota senate race, in which Democrat challenger Al Franken and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman are now separated by about 200 votes of 2.9 million cast. Democrats are just two seats shy of 60 in the Senate, which is the magic number at which they can shut down Republican filibusters against progressive legislation.

America is still waiting for results in two races. One will be decided December 2 in a Senate run-off election in Georgia, and the other depends on the laborious and already controversial outcome of a hand-by-hand recount of ballots in Minnesota's Franken-Coleman contest.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie finds himself smack in the middle of what pundits say is the fiercest election in state history, and certainly the most expensive. Coleman, who won in 2002 after his opponent Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash, is famous as a combative campaigner. Franken meanwhile is deeply determined to win back the seat once held by Wellstone, his close friend. Both camps are raising large sums of money to cover costs of monitoring the recount and whatever lawsuits may ensue. Coleman's election night margin see-saws up and down with each day's recount results. The race may be decided by what happens to challenged ballots that will be reviewed by Ritchie and the State Canvassing Board.

It is Mark Ritchie's challenge to ensure that every legitimate vote is counted in this hard-fought contest for which the whole country is waiting for the results. Already Ritchie -- voted into office in 2006 on the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) ticket, as Democrats are called in Minnesota -- has become a favorite target of right-wing commentators here and around the country. But he has also drawn complaints from the Franken camp for some of his decisions.

Each day Ritchie faces phalanxes of lawyers and recount observers from both sides as he tries to ensure the election results are accurate, fair and above partisan reproach. To that end, he appointed judges with ties to Republicans and the state's Independence Party (but none with apparent Democratic ties) to join him on the board that will oversee the recount' final results. Minnesota Governor Pawlenty, a Republican, has stated his public support for Ritchie and for the process despite complaints from the right-wing of his party.

Making sure that every vote counts is exactly the reason Mark Ritchie ran for Secretary of State. He realized the vulnerable nature of democracy in 2002 (not just in Florida, but in his home state) when Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash two weeks before election day.

Ritchie, a former high-ranking official in the state's agriculture department and founder of the Institute for Trade and Agriculture Policy, was shocked to learn that Minnesota's then Republican Secretary of State tried to block people who had voted for Wellstone on absentee ballots from casting a new ballot for Walter Mondale, who succeeded Wellstone as the Democratic nominee in the race against Coleman. (Several years earlier, a Democratic Secretary of State had done just the opposite when a new Republican candidate for Minnesota governor was added to the ticket at the last minute after a sex scandal and went on to win a very narrow victory.)

This struck Ritchie-a longtime advocate for small farmers, sustainable agriculture, fair trade policies, and human rights-as deeply unfair. It was not just that these absentee ballots could conceivably have made a difference in the election, but that citizens were to be denied the right to vote. (The Secretary of State ultimately allowed Minnesota voters to cast new absentee ballots.)

Ritchie views voting as what he calls, "a civic commons, which is essential to good government and democracy itself. But that commons can be taken from us by measures that make it difficult for many people to vote."