When Al Franken narrowly bested Norm Coleman for a Senate seat from Minnesota in 2008 after an exhaustive and seemingly corrupt series of recounts and challenges, with a final margin of only 312 votes, it appeared to be a low point in American electoral history.

It turns out that Franken’s margin of victory came from convicted felons who were ineligible to vote and yet voted for the washed-up comedian anyway.

Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, underwent an 18-month study and found that at least 341 felons – more than Franken’s margin of victory – voted in the 2008 election in Minneapolis (Hennepin County) and St. Paul (Ramsey County), heavily Democratic strongholds in that state. Convicted felons, where they are eligible to vote, do so for Democrats by margins of 85-90 percent or higher.

Minnesota Majority’s review included comparing lists of felons by hand with voting lists, and then comparing the matches to the voting roster. That process turned up 289 matches in Hennepin County and 52 in Ramsey County. Under Minnesota law, it’s a violation for count attorneys to fail to prosecute voter fraud cases, but to date neither county attorney’s office has done so.

The records for the 2008 elections are scheduled for destruction in September. The statute of limitations for voter fraud in the 2008 election will run in November. If the cases aren’t opened before then, it’s swept under the rug.

Democrat Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who was elected largely due to the ACORN/George Soros-funded Secretary of State Project, is also required to refer allegations of voter fraud to county attorneys. Ritchie has not done so.

Minnesota Majority reports that the Coleman-Franken election was fraught with so many problems that Jimmy Carter could vouch for its authenticity. The group says there were some 40,000 cases of double voter registration, about 100 apparent cases of double voting, tens of thousands of bad addresses on voter registrations and a smattering of non-citizen votes, vote total mismatches, post-Election Day registrations of voters who apparently cast ballots and voters who were under 18 on Election Day.

“We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done,” said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority’s executive director. “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”