A question about the election law

[dsc]

What would you be doing if this election had been for governor, would you just not have one right now? I think your law is great except not letting the winner at this point serve pending the contest.

[ISUGRADIA]

1. Senate decides

The Senate could seat Franken now if they wanted too, state law does not prevent it. The hold up is in a certificate of election. Senate resistance to seating Franken w/o a signed one.

In 1962 the same situation occurred with the Gov here. Incumbent Repub was sworn in being ahead in initial count then in March state Supreme Court seated the Democratic candidate who won the recount.

[dflprincess]

2. Rolvaag, the Democrat won the recount with 91 votes

Elmer L. Anderson (the Republican governor) could have challenged that result, but chose not to for the sake of the state. Of course, Anderson was a whole different breed of Republican (the state's Human Services building is named for him - can you imagine naming a human services building after one of today's Republicans).

In that recount, Minnesota would have been well served by either candidate.

Shortly before he died in 2004 he wrote a scathing editorial piece explaining why he was voting for John Kerry (he died Nov 16). And, he had refused to endorse Pawlenty when he first ran for governor.

He was also the president of the H.B. Fuller company and had an attitude toward business that would give today's CEOs and Republicans apoplexy

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/11/01_stawickie_andersonobit/

...In seven years, he rose to company president where he brought a philosophy unheard of in business at the time. He invested in employees.

"It meant more to him to be listed as one of the 100 best companies to work for rather than to make the Fortune 500 list," says the editor of Andersen's biography, Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial writer Lori Sturdevant.

"When H.B. Fuller went public in 1968, he announced to the shareholders at the first stockholder meeting, that if they really wanted to make money, maybe they should consider investing their money someplace else; that this wasn't necessarily going to be an investment based on big profits but rather concerned with public service."

Sturdevant says Andersen implemented a number of ground-breaking benefits: health care coverage, bonus vacation time with the condition that employees were required to use that time to have fun, parental leave with 40-percent pay and first in the nation to give employees their birthdays off. Andersen believed that if employees worked in a comfortable, friendly and inspiring environment, they would perform high quality work which would satisfy customers.