Update: Al Franken is the confirmed winner of the Senate race in Minnesota

CNN reported Sunday that a state election board in Minnesota will declare Al Franken the winner in the thus-far undecided U.S. Senate race. An announcement from the board is expected today. And Senate Dems are trying to seat him as early as tomorrow.

Word is that Franken’s opponent, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, will challenge the verdict. And Republican leaders in the Senate are pledging a fight:

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has pledged a GOP filibuster if the Democrat-controlled Senate attempts to seat Franken before all legal battles play out and before Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, can co-sign the secretary of state’s certificate.

The ongoing dispute ensures further uncertainty in the Senate roster, as Blago-appointed Roland Burris attempts to take over Obama’s Illinois seat. Whether or not Dems will make good on their promise not to seat him remains to be seen.

The disputes over each senate seat stem from different circumstances. In the case of Minnesota, a long and drawn-out recount has at different points put each of the candidates in the lead, usually by no more than a few hundred votes. In the case of Illinois, an allegedly corrupt governor has invoked anger in his party by exercising his power to appoint the replacement for the junior senator from Illinois, who left for a better job.

But both situations are cause for serious voter concern. We keep hearing that consumer confidence is just as important as more concrete financial indicators (performance of the S&P 500, for example) in determining the health of our economy. I believe that the same is true of voter confidence in our electoral process. We can partially assess the health of our voting processes by looking at concrete problems with voter registration, electronic voting, etc. But to get a real grasp on how well our elections, and therefore, our democracy, are working, we need to look at whether or not citizens believe that our elections work.

When you’ve got one senate seat flip-flopping between two candidates for two months amidst gripes about uncounted absentee ballots and another being tossed around by politicians, both corrupt and honest, in a power-grabbing free-for-all, it’s pretty much guaranteed that a certain portion of the electorate will turn their heads away from elections once again, believing that their votes don’t matter. And when they start to think their votes don’t matter, they won’t vote.

I am always brought back to a quote from an international election observer in the documentary I was a producer on, Election Day. Australian Shanta Martin was asked by a local reporter in a St. Louis precinct if all there were too many observers in the polling place. Were there too many cooks in the kitchen? Shanta replied:

“The more observers you have, the more transparent the process, then the greater confidence that voters can have in that process and that’s really the reason that we’re here—to hopefully increase the voter confidence in their electoral process.”

So yes, there are two senate seats at stake, which is a big deal. But there’s a much greater battle being fought this week as these dramas in Illinois, Minnesota and Washington, DC play themselves out—the battle for the trust of the American voter in our most fundamental democratic process: casting a ballot.

takepart Sign Common Causes’s “Protect the Vote in Minnesota” petition.

(Photo: Aaron Landy’s flickr photostream)