ST. PAUL, Minnesota (The Dissociated Press) - After an exhaustive vote recount, in which almost three million ballots for the US Senate race in Minnesota were manually inspected by election officials, screened by bomb-sniffing dogs, and given urine tests by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, the State Elections Canvassing Board Monday unanimously certified Democrat Al Franken as the winner, by eight-tenths of a vote, over Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the older brother of former actor and California gubernatorial-recall candidate, Gary Coleman.
The deciding eight-tenths of a vote in the election was said to be cast by 96 year-old Eldrige Lumpkin of Hackett, MN, who apparently died of natural causes while in the act of voting. Officials determined, however, that the final scratchings on Lumpkin's ballot were sufficient to indicate his intent to vote for Franken.
Speaking briefly to reporters following the Board's announcement, Franken said, "After sixty-two days of careful and painstaking hand inspection of nearly three million ballots by election officials and volunteers across this state, I am proud to stand before you today and say, 'I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, doggone it, people like me!'"
Before Franken can take office, the election results must still be certified by Republican Gov. Tim "Good and" Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
The Coleman campaign has said it plans to have both men kidnapped.
"Just the way our luck is going these days," one top Republican strategist was overheard complaining. "If it's 2000, in Florida, we get Katherine Harris; but, instead, it's 2008 in Iceland, and we've got Cesar Chavez!"
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