Did voter fraud decide the election? It's impossible to prove, but it seems unlikely:
- Coleman's lawyers had ample time to allege voter fraud during the unnecessarily long court challenge. They did not.
- Minnesota Majority's 2,800 number (cited in their original post) is not meaningful. Even their 480 likeliest candidates were mostly voters who were not only eligible but clearly eligible to vote. For example, the group identified eligible voters as possibly ineligible because they had the same name as a felon, even if their birth-dates were different.
- It's not clear that ineligible felon voters would have favored Franken, much less by an amount sufficient to matter. The one felon whose vote was identified in the recount process voted for Coleman. Even the 2,800 names provided by Minnesota Majority don't seem to come disproportionately from Democratic areas.
Minnesota Majority's real goals seem to be delegitimizing their state's duly elected Senator and pushing for laws which would principally suppress eligible votes.
Pawlenty: Investigate felon votes in Senate race | StarTribune.com
Pawlenty: felons may have tipped Senate race | kare11.com