GOVERNOR'S RACE RECOUNT
Sample of challenged ballots says it all
Thank you, Star Tribune, for publishing photos of ballots challenged by the Tom Emmer campaign in the recount. Your Dec. 2 article "From count room to courtroom?" and the photos reveal that would-be emperor Emmer has no clothes.
According to directions from election judges, all of those ballots were proper votes. Our local election judges have told me that ballot-reading machines are designed to allow for circles not completely filled in, or larger circles outside the lines. The purpose of the ballot-reading machine is to read voter intent. The challenged ballots were clearly all intended for Mark Dayton.
Political leaders, as loud and obnoxious as they may be, must nonetheless bow to the political will of the people. The will of Minnesota citizens is to proceed to the seating of our properly elected governor, without theatrics and political manipulations. If Emmer pursues a legal challenge to the recount, his action will only enhance his rejection by Minnesota voters.
BARBARA FINLEY-SHEA, LYLE, MINN.
• • •
Emmer said that he doesn't plan to go nuts about the recount. I hope he agrees that it would be nuts not to do everything possible to move forward with reconciliation of the votes.
Sadly, some people cheat when they vote, and our current system of voting makes it easy. I'll never forget one of the times I was an election judge and a voter told me with a straight face that this was his second time voting.
Recounting votes that have been cast illegitimately is an injustice to honest citizens who expect only one vote per person. Reconciliation will give us the most accurate account of who won the governor's race. If our secretary of state and governor certify the election without it, people may legitimately say our system is "nuts."
RUSS ROONEY, ROGERS, MINN.
• • •
It is one thing for GOP chair Tony Sutton to attempt to undermine public trust in Minnesota's voting system (generally regarded as one of the best in the nation) by suggesting fraud and orchestrating frivolous ballot challenges in the recount, all for political gain. But it is quite another when recently retired Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, who played a crucial (and to all appearances, principled and nonpartisan) role in the Coleman/Franken recount, joins in the Emmer team's effort to sabotage public trust and delay the inevitable outcome.
Local officials are dismayed by increasingly frivolous challenges (to which an Emmer lawyer outrageously retorted that they had "better eyesight" than the officials). And "ballots that would have been deemed valid by Justice Magnuson in 2008 are being aggressively challenged by attorney Magnuson's team this time."
How quickly and dispiritingly a public servant has sold out and become a hired gun.
GEORGE MUELLNER, PLYMOUTH
• • •
So the GOP, which constantly gripes about the inefficiency of government, is now whining about Hennepin County offering to make the recount more efficient by adding more ballot-counting tables because the GOP can't organize itself to keep up.
And people actually think that by electing Republicans they will make government more efficient?
MATT PETTIS, MINNEAPOLIS
Pawlenty's pardon
What was governor's original justification?
There is something seriously wrong when Gov. Tim Pawlenty and two other officials, who are supposed to be hard on crime, don't ask basic questions but feel that it is OK for criminals to be pardoned when they marry their victims ("Pawlenty defends vote on pardon," Dec. 2).
Victims, especially young ones, often lack the ability to think clearly and assertively for their rights and well-being. Can any vulnerable 14-year-old truly stand up to adult pressures for sex? There is a reason why children are legally not able to give consent for sex with adults. It is for their protection.
Pawlenty states: "The alleged behavior of this individual is sickening, and it makes me heartsick."
But in 2008, when he granted the pardon, the offender, Jeremy Giefer, was still a sexual criminal who simply married his young, vulnerable victim. What was Pawlenty's thinking?
Did Pawlenty ask if Giefer really had made amends for his crime? Or if he had fully taken responsibility for his actions? Or if he had successfully completed sexual offender treatment? Or if he had become a law-abiding person? Obviously not -- not even the first time.
Pawlenty doesn't get that sex offender treatment is about taking full responsibility for criminal actions and truly making amends. People can change. But revictimizing the victim by marrying her is a sexual predator's dream.
How can our governor not understand this?
DANE JORENTO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ABC MENTAL HEALTH THERAPY, ST. PAUL
Archdiocese lawsuit
Nun asks when church will do the right thing
When will the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States start doing the morally right thing for the morally right reason?
Not soon enough in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, apparently.
It was unconscionable for this diocese to initiate legal proceedings to compel a credible victim/survivor of sexual abuse by a priest to pay $64,000 in legal expenses ("Archdiocese drops claim for fees," Dec. 1).
It is not as if the Ramsey County judge dismissed the case because of lack of evidence. It was because the statute of limitation had expired.
I find it morally reprehensible that Archbishop John C. Nienstedt allowed this to get so out of hand.
Have the bishops learned so little since the 1980s and the tragic events in the diocese of Lafayette, La.?
SISTER MAUREEN PAUL TURLISH, NEW CASTLE, DEL.
