Don't be afraid EE...Franken or his team did not recount any ballots. The MN board of elections did one recount which was required by MN law because of how close the original election results were. During the recount, it looks like both sides appealed to the courts to have some ballots included/excluded. An old article from CNN, but it goes into a bit of detail about the ongoing recount at that time As far as your brilliant determination that Franken will serve one term because he's an idiot...the man graduated from Harvard cum laude with a BA in political science (and for the record, I don't think that Bush (Yale grad) was an idiot either, unlike other lefts on this board may think...I just strongly disagree with the decisions he made). That "argument" doesn't hold water in my book.