Al Franken...is this for real?

[warch]

Back to Al: (full disclosure: I voted for him)

One thing I do know: Ritchie, the elected official in charge of the recount is a good, honest man. So what ever happens is square.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by warch

One thing I do know: Ritchie, the elected official in charge of the recount is a good, honest man. So what ever HE KNOWS happens is square.

fixed that for ya.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by warch

Back to Al: (full disclosure: I voted for him)

One thing I do know: Ritchie, the elected official in charge of the recount is a good, honest man. So what ever happens is square.

Let's hope the rest of the 'sotans see it that way.

[classicman]

Funny Business in Minnesota

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

There is more - Its an interesting read.. I think it shows a much more serious problem to what should be a very simple situation.

[glatt]

It's a biased opinion piece, planted by the RNC.

Republicans are already framing the Coleman/Franken fight as an example of Democrats acting improperly. The Republican National Committee late last night sent an editorial to reporters from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page alleging "Funny Business in Minnesota."

An actual news article would give you better information. For example, this twin cities article quotes Coleman's recount attorney as saying that Coleman would basically ruin his career in Minnesota if he challenged the Franken victory in court because voters are sick of the recount issue and want it to be over.

Among vote caches Coleman could ask the courts to consider:

# The 654 rejected absentee ballots the Coleman campaign says may be wrongly rejected. The campaign has a request before the Minnesota Supreme Court for inclusion of those ballots. That issue might be decided this morning, which could put the kibosh on the declaration of a Franken victory. Those ballots tend to come from more Republican areas than the mistakenly rejected absentee ballots identified by county officials and included in the recount totals Saturday. If Coleman gets his way on those ballots, they could net him 50 votes or more.

# The 133 missing ballots from Ward 3, Precinct 1, in Minneapolis. Those ballots disappeared after Election Day and before the recount. The state canvassing board, upon request from the city's elections director, voted to accept the election night total from that precinct. That decision netted Franken 46 votes. If that decision were reversed in an election lawsuit, Franken would lose those votes.

# The 171 found ballots in Maplewood's Fire Station No. 7, where the city's Precinct 6 voters cast their ballots. Those votes were uncounted on Election Day, but the ballots appeared during the hand recount. Franken netted 37 votes from their appearance.

# Potentially more than 100 Franken votes from various precincts in Minneapolis. The Coleman campaign believes those votes were counted twice in the recount, after damaged original ballots were separated from their duplicates created by election judges. The campaign told the state Supreme Court it believes both the original and the duplicate ballots were tallied. The court decided it could not sort through the issue but allowed that Coleman might bring it up in an election lawsuit, in which evidence and testimony could be gathered.

If all those issues moved Coleman's way, Franken would lose more votes than his current 225-vote lead.

And that's not even a complete list of the matters the Coleman campaign might bring before a court.

The election contest may go "way back to the most ancient history," Knaak [Coleman's recount attorney] said. And if the courts agree with Coleman's doubts about the count in certain precincts, hundreds of votes could swing.

"The results of entire precincts could get thrown out," he said, although he made clear he was not necessarily advocating that.

That means Coleman would not have to see victory on every legal issue but still would need many favorable decisions.

"It is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it is doable," Knaak said.

There are other reasons not to go forward: expense and public opinion. If Coleman goes to court, he'd bear the brunt of both.

Minnesotans, having anxiously watched the recount for more than two months, may be just sick of the whole thing.

"You'd hear a collective moan" when the lawsuit gets filed, Knaak said.

And many of the state's voters could blame the continuing fight on Coleman, who may hope for a political future beyond the Senate.

So Coleman's attorney is talking about throwing out the results of entire precincts and that a legal challenge "won't be easy."

[classicman]

No question the piece was biased, that was only part of the point. The other point was that the system is effed up. Its hard to believe that they can't get something which seems relatively simple done easily.

[glatt]

Getting hundreds of part-time, temporary workers, located in hundreds of locations to follow complex instructions is far from simple.

We've got around 100 people in my department. These are all college educated professionals. Each week, they are supposed to fill out a simple time sheet so they will get paid. They have a very strong incentive to fill it out correctly. Money depends on it. Each week, a handful do it wrong. It's a different handful each week. There is about a 95% success rate doing a simple task like filling out a time sheet.

In Minnesota, you've got around 5 million people. I don't know how many voted, although that figure is surely posted somewhere. Let's assume it was around 3 million voters. Out of 3 million votes you have something like 500 ballots that are questionable. That's a success rate of 99.99%. I think that is outstanding.

This election is statistically a tie, but you have to declare a winner. Franken is currently ahead by 255 votes after the recount where the absentee ballots were counted. The only way for Coleman to win is to start filing lawsuits to disqualifying entire precincts where there were little glitches. If I lived in one of those precincts, I'd be pissed.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by classicman

No question the piece was biased,

Not to mention full of factual errors.

that was only part of the point. The other point was that the system is effed up. Its hard to believe that they can't get something which seems relatively simple done easily.

In my opinion, the system was quite transparent, and went very smoothly. One glitch was the loss of an envelope of votes, where they had envelopes "2 of 5", "3 of 5", "4 of 5", and "5 of 5", but could not find "1 of 5".

The 133 missing ballots, from example, were in an envelope from the not-exactly-shenanigans-prone University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis that got counted late on election night, then transported to a warehouse, and seem to have gone missing in the recount. Everyone spent a day combing the place for the envelope as if they were on a CSI episode, but to no avail. "You'd love to find it," says Mark Ritchie, Minnesota's secretary of state. "Out of 3 million ballots, to have one envelope missing, you know, darn it." You know, darn it is the Minnesota equivalent of self-flagellation.

Here's how the posted editorial describes that incident:

Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount.

[Griff]

Franken, Kennedy, and Burris make me wonder how broken the democratic process is.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Griff

Franken, Kennedy, and Burris make me wonder how broken the democratic process is.

This guy Burris. He is technically correct, but, this is one of those situations where being right matters less than not making a jackass of yourself. It honestly reminds me of something I might do, just bulldoze ahead, knowing how "right" I am. I hope I don't come off like this guy.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Flint

This guy Burris. He is technically correct, but, this is one of those situations where being right matters less than not making a jackass of yourself. It honestly reminds me of something I might do, just bulldoze ahead, knowing how "right" I am. I hope I don't come off like this guy.

I'm disappointed in the Senate for blocking Burris. I think they are flat out wrong and are breaking the law.

In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. We all know that Blago is a crook, but in the eyes of the law, today, he's an innocent man. He hasn't been convicted yet. He has the authority as governor to choose whoever he wants to fill that seat, and he's chosen Burris. The Senate can't block that just because they don't like it. It's a stupid political game at a time when the country really doesn't need political games. Burris will eventually end up serving as Senator, so this game just makes the Senate leaders look like ineffectual douchbags.

Yeah, I'm a registered Democrat, and I just called the leaders of my party ineffectual douchbags.

[classicman]

Agreed - If the vote hadn't been challenged, then the original result would have been wrong. Personally I think Franken is an ass, but I really don't care who wins either way. I'm more interested in getting the result right the first time, which apparently did NOT happen in this case.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by classicman

Agreed - If the vote hadn't been challenged, then the original result would have been wrong.

Well, the "original result' was never an official result. It's just that we live in an age where we want instant news reported. So they were reporting the count as it was progressing. They hadn't counted the absentee ballots yet. When they realized that the election was close, they knew that they would have to do a recount including the mailed in absentee ballots. (By the way, Franken never challenged the result or asked for a recount. It was part of the normal process to do a recount when the results were that close.)

All of this is to say that the vote isn't official until it's official, and up until then it's just watching the sausage making.

In a tie like this, I'd also be temped to have a do-over, but that isn't fair either because the conditions would be different. Some groups might not be motivated to vote a second time, or able to vote a second time for whatever reason, and the results will be different in an unfair way.

I think Franken is an interesting choice for Senator, but Minnesota elected a professional wrestler in the past, so who am I to judge them?

[classicman]

Just thinking out loud - perhaps they do not and should not declare a winner. Perhaps because this is, as you said, "a statistical tie" There should be some type of runoff election. I know that too is fraught with problems, but like I said - I'm just thinkin out loud.

[TheMercenary]

Well there you have it. Franken is their man. They will get what they deserve, a class clown.