And James is right-there needs to be reform to the overall process.

Are you endorsing a federal law to accomplish this? If so, I'm a little surprised a conservative would gloss right over the federalism concerns.

As a practical matter, president, US House, and US Senate are federal elections even though they're technically not. I'd be fine with centralizing the standards and procedures while keeping the administration local.

We desperately need to clean up our electoral system to end this sort of nonsense. Voting rules and procedures need to be streamlined and idiot-proofed, removing the need for post-balloting interpretation by interested parties.

Joyner-
Are you endorsing a federal law to accomplish this? If so, I'm a little surprised a conservative would gloss right over the federalism concerns. Candidate qualification, voter registration, voting methods, polling places operations and count and recount procedures are all matters of state law and often local practices. I'd like to bring the United States into the 20th century by standardizing them for the whole country, but I doubt that most Republicans (or some Democrats) would vote for such a change.

We desperately need to clean up our electoral system to end this sort of nonsense.

As the first reform I would second Brett's suggestion of a run-off system. The situation in Minnesota is just one that has been fomented by lack of such a system.

I'd also favor a reform that prohibits second-guessing of election judges. Barring provable misconduct or serious procedural errors the decisions made in the individual precincts should stand.

As to the legitimacy of seating Franken given Minnesota's history I think that Minnesotans will accept any certified candidate as legitimate.

As it is, I don't particularly care if Franken loses the Senate seat. The Democrats already have effectively 58 Senators in their pocket even if both Franken and Martin lose; it's not that hard to find two GOP Senators to support various pieces of legislation.