I asked Pawlenty whether he and his PAC would push for voter registration reform along the lines of his own state’s fairly straightforward process, which allows registration up to and including Election Day. (Thanks to my colleague Graham Moomaw for typing it up.)

“One potential corrosion of our freedom and liberty is to have the democratic system, the election system, being undermined or becoming even partially fraudulent or lacking in credibility,” said Pawlenty. “We have electronic scanners in Minnesota. The ballots that were cast last time through the scanners were 99.9 or so percent accurate. There were no problems with them and the individuals who cast those ballots had to present themselves at a polling place in person and with at least some, you know, screens around identification and proper voting.”

Pawlenty went on to say that “all the problems in Minnesota in the Franken-Coleman [Senate] race related to the absentee ballot process.”

“I’ve been told that in 2006 there were 12,000 absentee ballots cast in our state,” said Pawlenty. “That’s a high number based on a historical number, so keep that in mind, 12,000 in 2006. In 2008, there were almost 300,000 absentee ballots cast in our state. Now this is a process where people are supposed to use absentee ballots because they’re unavailable in their voting area on Election Day because they’re out of the state, they’re on business travel, or they’re medically or physically unable to show up. So you can see in a presidential race, you know, an increase of say 10 percent or 20 percent or something like that from 2006. But what you saw is approaching this 3,000 percent increase, in absentee voting in Minnesota … obviously something very extraordinary occurred and what occurred is you had grassroots organizations come in here and use the absentee ballot process as a substitute for voting by mail. And, almost all of the problems … in the Franken-Coleman case come out of these absentee ballots.”

Pawlenty circled back to my question about whether his own state’s voter registration system should be a national model. “Same-day registration in Minnesota would be fine if we had more stringent identification requirements,” he said, “specifically photo ID. We don’t require, and we should require in Minnesota, photo ID. So it’s not that the timing or the day of it is the problem. It’s making sure that we welcome any legal person who’s entitled to vote, to vote. We just need to make sure it’s appropriate. Now, we don’t have a history or tradition in Minnesota of a lot of voter fraud or these kinds of concerns but this Franken-Coleman experience, particularly as related to the absentee ballots, gives us pause. So, it’s not so much a same-day registration issue as it is making sure the registration, and the identification that goes along with it, is rigorous and appropriate.”

I told Pawlenty that I’d asked the question in the context of him hiring Sara Taylor to work for his campaign, and wondered whether he agreed with the priority she, and the Bush administration in general, placed on poring over voter rolls for alleged registration fraud.

“Absolutely,” Pawlenty said. “We should aggressively, at the state and federal level, enforce voter fraud concerns and to aggressively investigate and enforce voter fraud concerns. Because if we allow any corrosion to the integrity of the system, it calls into question the entire credibility of the results of the election and ultimately the pillars of the democracy. It is extraordinarily important. It goes to the core credibility and acceptance of our democratic system. And if people are going to question the outcome and say it was derived by fraud, as opposed to the will of the people, you’ve undermined a core tenet of democracy. It’s very concerning. Now, so to answer your question, we should make it a critical priority.”

Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) repeatedly used the video in ads to make Franken look like a madman. A month before the election, the Franken campaign put out an ad shaming Coleman for the distortion.

Today, the National Republican Senatorial Committee put out a web video informing voters that, with Franken’s arrival in the Senate, the Democrats have total control of Washington. The video they use of Franken? Multiple clips of him telling the Wellstone story, selectively edited to make him look like Lenin.

If you look closely, you can tell that Franken is yelling “You can take this guy!”

Using the worst possible video of a politician is hardly new; the slow-motion greyscale video of a candidate yawning is a staple of the negative ad. But this is a video of Franken telling a story about his dead friend, and it was aired countless times to make a case — Franken’s too crazy to be a senator! — that bombed with Minnesota voters.

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The conventional wisdom, fueled by an AP report today, is that he’d be a logical candidate and likely front-runner to succeed Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) in the governor’s mansion.

I wrote much of this back in June, but it hasn’t stopped being true: Coleman is not that popular. He’s run for statewide office three times, losing twice, and winning only after his opponent, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), died in a plane crash and was replaced on the ballot by former Vice President Walter Mondale. Coleman’s clever and delicate 11th-hour campaign against Mondale was impressive, but it still only netted him 49.5 percent of the vote in a very good Republican year. The last Minnesota poll, conducted in April by the Star-Tribune, gave him a 17-point net negative favorable rating. And for much of 2007 and 2008, he was considered the heavy favorite for re-election, considering Al Franken’s long record of potentially controversial jokes, a strange tax issue (he failed to pay taxes on speaking fees in different states) and his difficulty uniting the Democratic base. (After Franken locked up the Democratic nomination at a state convention, he drew a bitter primary challenger who attacked him for his “record of pornography and degradation of women and minorities” and drew 30 percent of the primary vote.)

Add this to Coleman’s ongoing legal problems and considerable debt and it’s really quite strange that reporters handicap his chances for a comeback in an election only 16 months away.

The bottom line here is that ballots were inarguably treated differently, and the Supreme Court, in reviewing the case, never dealt with that fact.  In Franken-friendly counties such as Hennepin, far more liberal standards were applied to absentee ballots than in counties not so Franken-friendly.

Every county used the same standard, of course, putting ballots into five piles, ranked by their readability. The argument is that some officials in some counties marked ballots in, say, pile 2, that other officials would have marked in pile 3. No court considered this an equal protection argument.

Also:

Between the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the television network affiliates, there was a public relations push that Franken had somehow won the race legitimately and Norm Coleman was a sore loser.  It gathered the force of a freight train.

A really, really slow-moving freight train.

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That’s because the soon-to-be-sworn-in freshman is slated to take seats on both the Senate Judiciary and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees — the two panels that just happen to be on the front lines of the Democrats’ priorities for the rest of the year.

First, there’s the thorny debate over health care reform, which the HELP committee has already officially begun — but which also remains a long way from over. Then there’s the process to seat Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court, which will launch in the Judiciary panel. And finally, there’s the ideologically charged battle over the labor-friendly Employee Free Choice Act, a fight set to begin this summer in the HELP Committee.

Franken will also sit on the Special Committee on Aging and the Indian Affairs panel.

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“I am deeply disappointed in the decision made by the state Supreme Court, and I share the frustration of Minnesota’s voters. At the core of our democracy lies two concrete principles: No valid vote should go uncounted and all votes should be treated equally. Sadly, those principles were not adhered to during this election. While I would have proudly stood behind Norm Coleman had he chosen to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, I know that his decision to withdraw from this race was not an easy one, but one that he felt was the best decision for the people of Minnesota. For the last six years, Norm represented the people of Minnesota with distinction, earning a much deserved reputation as one of the hardest-working members of Congress. I, on behalf of all Republicans, thank him for his service and will miss his leadership in Washington.”

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“Every Senate seat is important,” said Van Dongen. “When you think of the amount of money involved in the recount and the subsequent proceedings — whatever it was, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million — that’s the smallest amount you’ll see spent on a Senate seat anywhere in the country, in any state.”

Van Dongen would have been ready to raise funds for more Coleman challenges — “I think there would have been a broad base of support” — but he supported the decision. “It’s his decision to make. From our perspective it’s a loss to the U.S. Senate and a loss to the free enterprise cause, and I hope to see him in public life again.”

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“The Minnesota Supreme Court has today addressed the issues surrounding the accuracy and integrity of our election system during the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota,” Pawlenty said in a statement. “In light of that decision and Senator Coleman’s announcement that he will not be pursuing an appeal, I will be signing the election certificate today as directed by the court and applicable law.”