A so-so day in Election Contest Court (ECC), but there are signs the Coleman case is finally approaching its finish line like an fresh-landed walleye writhing across the ice.
Franken leads 249; and MAYBE +261! BUT looks to be closing in on another +7 votes. (Or maybe +18; see below, part 1; still breaking)
No decisions:
MN Supreme Court: Franken suit to force a Certificate of Election. (Day 19 since hearing.)
ECC Court: Coleman Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that could lead to already counted and certified ballots being UNcounted. Franken Counter-Motion to a TRO, and, since such a Motion (granted or not) violated a Stipulation with Prejudice, Franken request Coleman attorneys be sanctioned (legally spanked.) (Day 4 since hearing.)
1) Franken KEDGES another 18 votes
Kedges? Kedging?
In the War of 1812 the USS Constitution was caught at sea by a British fleet. As the British closed for capture or destruction all the vessels were becalmed, no air stirring at all. They bobbed & drifted on what currents stirred the waters. The American captain made a desperate decision: he lowered longboats and then gently let down anchors into them. Sailors then rowed ahead to the length of the anchor chain and heaved the anchors overboard. The Constitution moved ahead a few ship-lengths until its anchors hung vertically. The longboats returned as the crew raised anchors and lowered them into the longboats again.
The British also began kedging and it became a test of American vs. British backs. The Constitution pulled away far enough it caught a slight breeze, retrieved her longboats, and sailed away to fight another day.
Monday the Nauen group filed new papers with the ECC. The "Nauen 61" (named for their attorney) are a group of 61 Minnesota voters whose absentee ballots were not counted and the voters believe improperly not counted. They filed a separate suit with the ECC (MN law specifies such matters are to be settled by and Election Contest Court; we happen to have one of those meeting right now) to get them counted. (Team Franken helped them with legal advice and $ and so far as we know they are all Franken voters.)
Back on Feb. 10 the ECC ruled 23 of these votes IN and to be counted (waiting to see if other ballots will be added, so the actual counting is pending; 1 more ballot has the registration card in the secrecy envelope (so says the voter) and the Court ordered this ballot be made ready too.) So Al Franken's total lead went from +225 to +249 in this series.
The other 37 ballots the ECC asked for more information from the voters. In a Monday motion 18 more strong-backed sailor/voters from the longboat "Nauen" complied. No answer yet from the ECC but it sure looks like those hearty tars are rowing out ahead. When the ECC rules they'll toss the anchor overboard and the USS ("United States Senator") Franken's lead will KEDGE out another +18. I'll leave it at +249 for now but the oars are dipping and pulling folks.
(Math & physics whizzes can enjoy creating a formula for calculating how far forward a ship will move given the length of the anchor chain and until the sinking anchor is in a vertical position.)
UPDATE: Pioneer Press is reporting the ECC has accepted 12 of these 18! Franken kedges ahead another +12!
UPDATE 2 NO they haven't. According to Vote Fro America's diary the 12 votes at stake here are NOT related to the Nauen61. They have been admitted for counting by the ECC....but not yet opened. VfA seems to think they are NOT all of the Franken persuasion at the end of his diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
SOOoooooo..... as in all things Recount, "we'll see"
2) Election Contest Court (ECC)- Episode XXVII- The Drone goes on
How is it going in ECC? Well the the trial itself is more of the same-old same-old. But number cruncher TomTech believes the Coleman side only has about 425 ballots to offer and take back and a limited number of their own witnesses left to impeach (What a way to try a case!) and believes they will wind up sometime this week! (By all that is holy, let it be so......)
This was somewhat confirmed by the Gins-iest of the Berg boys at a presser. Asked when they might be done with their case he said as soon as Friday. "How done?" came the question (the reporters have been burned before.)
"Done, done," Ben the Gins responded. (Does he mean the Minneapolis 133 done? The alleged duplicate ballot/double-counted maybe 100-never-seen-a-shred-of-proof, done?)
If it were just Ben Ginsberg I'd dismiss it as unimportant, an early arriving robin that will die in the next cold snap of 14 below. But TomTech saying so?......Hmmmm.... we'll see.
The bloggers over at the UpTake are somehow staying awake:
[Comment From Latte Liberal]
@Landslide Al: as long as we are in a chess analogy, I'd say the position on the board is as follows: The match has been won,and the losing side is now suing for a urine test to be administered. The winning side counters that there are no provisions for doping in chess but here's some ...ahem...go ahead, analyze this
Franken team lawyer David Lillehaug on cross-exam continues to mock Team Coleman:
[Comment From patricia]
Just a layman's view but Lillehaug seems to be doing a minute dissection of what the Coleman camp in turn agreed to, then disagreed, then un-agreed then mis-agreed and finally non-agreed ;)
And finally, NO WORD from the ECC late Monday night as the the Coleman Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent the Sec. of State's office from redacting the 933 "pile 5" ballots that were counted back on Jan. 3. (Gory details, including a legal tour de force by Lillehaug in opposition in the Saturday diary (v. 82).
I still think the ECC will deny the request. There is a school of thought on these boards that Team Coleman is being deliberately provocative, almost hoping the ECC will come down on them like the wrath of Odin. Even sanctions have been asked for (minor to major penalties imposed by a court on a lawyer(s) whose conduct goes out of bounds.) The idea is if the ECC rules against and slams the Berg Brothers, Trimble, Knaak and Langdon with fines/ a visit to the Ramsey County holding facility, or worse, then the Coleman team can appeal to a higher court alleging ECC bias against them and citing the "excessive/disproportionate/unbalanced etc." sanctions themselves as proof of the court's animosity.
That plan may be the ONLY thing keeping the court from landing on them like a chopped-through Norway pine. The ECC does not want to see these guys again and do NOT want their capers back before another Minnesota judge or court.
3) Coleman Universe Shrinks again!
YEP! From 10962 back on January 3, the Coleman universe of possible rejected absentee ballots (his only hope) was limited to 4797 as of Jan. 23 by filings with the ECC. In early Feb. the court shrank it to 4623 by striking off 174 ballots that were late. On Feb. 13 the Court ruled 12/13 categories of ballots OUT, which took the number down to 3500, then 3300 as admitted by the Coleman side.
NOW the Coleman side is saying they believe only about 2000 ballots can conceivably be viewed by the court.
Coleman's attorneys now say they believe there are about 2,000 valid, yet uncounted, votes on those ballots, which had been originally rejected by local election officials. That's down from their original estimate but still a significant number.
Franken's attorneys say there are an additional 800 or so valid absentee ballots that should be counted but that the Coleman legal team hadn't highlighted.
The judges haven't yet indicated how many of that universe of about 3,000 ballots they will order opened and counted.
I gotta tell ya I LIKE the trend line even if its not from Research2000!
Franken attorney Marc Elias took note of the cosmological shrinking and is NOT worried the sky is falling:
But Franken attorney Marc Elias said that the ballots submitted by Coleman showed that the Republican's pool of possible ballots continued to shrink.
"The smaller that his universe becomes, the harder it is for him to make up that margin ... That might explain why as we've gone along, the Coleman campaign seems to have shifted more and more towards claiming fundamental errors in the process as opposed to trying to focus on those counts," he said.
Might explain why you've gone along!? Yeah, it DOES fit!
On a different note we've all admired the legal work of the Franken team and blown rotten lingonberries at the sloppy stuff coming from the Coleman side. But its not all perfect and there may be an oopsie in the Franken universe (although the source for this IS the Coleman side and a significant probability exists a) they are wrong or b) Elias & Lillehaug are REALLY good at resurrections.)
According to the Coleman campaign, the Franken legal team has some problem getting absentee ballots straight. Late Monday, the Republican posted three ballot envelopes Franken included on his list of votes that should be counted. Each of the envelopes came from voters who the Coleman campaign says were, in fact, dead on Election Day. Minnesota law requires all voters to be alive on the day of the election to have their votes counted.
If this gets ANY traction at all stand by for the Reichwingers to start screeching "Dead people voting for Franken!...Just like Chicago....")
Tuesday Morning Minnesota Media
Rachel Stassen-Berger has a decent write-up in the Pioneer Press but she does buy into a fair bit of the "uncertainty" meme of the Coleman side, more than she needs to in my book, but still an informative read:http://www.twincities.com/...
Jay Weiner at Minn Post continues fine work in covering the story here:http://www.minnpost.com/...
Doyle & Duchshcere of the Star Tribune confirm (you heard it here on Sunday first, folks! Still running ahead of the pack on DailyKos! Buffs fingernails) that most of the 804 ballots Franken has added to his universe (Universe De Franken, UF) are indeed as grape-picked as Normie's 654 were cherry-picked:
Two-thirds of the 804 ballots on Franken's latest list, released over the weekend, are from counties where the DFLer prevailed. And 60 percent of those are from counties Franken won by 10 percentage points or more.
Oh, and the rest of the UF, the remaining 781 of the UF?
Franken also proposes to count another 781 rejected absentee ballots that are among a much larger group that Coleman at one point also wanted to include.
But while Coleman's larger list, initially numbering about 5,000, was made up of ballots from generally Republican areas, three-fifths of the 781 that Franken wants to count come from counties that he carried.
Team Franken has been GOOD on numbers all along. Sounds like they are still at it.
http://www.startribune.com/...
OK thats the latest. I hope it will hold you until the UpTake starts broadcasting at 9:00am for day 22 of the ECC. Below is a little something I wanted to put up for FEB. 24 but its a sidebar. You can skip to the comments because this is all the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom....and RAHU (RAW-hoo).
PS.
In March, 1917 Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne of Russia and a new, weak democratic government (whose mainspring was Mr. Kerensky) took over. To re-inivograte the war effort they adopted a plan that would allow ethnic members of the Army to be grouped together under officers from the same part of the Empire, on the theory they would fight better for Mother Russia when led by leaders who spoke their own language.
First to take advantage of the plan: the Estonians. Col Laidoner was given leave to go home to organize and train Estonian members of the army. By the summer of 1917 the Kerensky government revoked the idea, finding Estonians, Finns, Latvians etc. had a disturbing tendency to cherish their own peoples' aspirations more than Mother Russia. The Estonian Autonomous Council was disbanded (but went underground.)
In Nov., 1917 Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the gang shot their way to power chanting "democracy" (while overthrowing it), "land reform" (while taking it from the peasants), "bread" (while letting people starve), and "ethnic self-determination" (while unleashing arrests and executions on anyone not Communist). Somehow this program failed to rally the masses and in 1918 Imperial Germany decided to march east as long as Lenin would not make peace. On Feb. 23 the Russians retreated from Tallinn, Estonia. On FEBRUARY 24 the Estonian Council came out from hiding, hung posters & handbills around town, declared Estonia independent (for the first time since 1271 AD) and declared the nation neutral in the War. On February 25 the Germans arrived, scraped down all the handbills and posters and declared the area part of Greater Germany. (Nothing new about this. The saying is: "All Estonian history happens between conquerors.")
Nov. 11, 1918 Germany called it quits to end WWI. Lenin and the gang decided to reopen the Czarist "prison of nations" and round up the usual prisoners. But the prisoners rose: Finns, Ukranians, Georgians, Poles. The Russians attacked Estonia in mid-November, occupied the college town of Tartu and began rounding up civilians at random to execute them. (They narrowly missed catching a couple of newlyweds (Nov. 25, 1918), Alfred & Meta WinRev, who fled to Tallinn.) German units in the area (left there by the Allies to shield Europe from the Bolsheviks) refused to fight and refused arms to Laidoner's men who wanted to fight. While the defense was ferocious the Russians advanced from the east and southeast, steadily shrinking Estonia into a smaller and smaller square.
But as Bogart would say in Casablanca, "Fate has taken a hand." In mid December British Admiral Sinclair captured 2 Russian destroyers intact in the Gulf of Finland. As the Royal Navy had just finished a major war they were well-stocked with ships. Sinclair turned the ships over to the Estonians, creating an instant navy. He also landed arms in Tallinn, most importantly 1000 machine guns. Everyone knew machine guns were heavy, crew operated deals, dug into trench lines, ideal for defense. But after 1917 the Western allies had stopped arms shipments to Russia because they weren't being used against the Germans. Technology continued evolving and the 1000 guns Sinclair unloaded were lightweight, single-man units (not quite the 1920's Tommy gun from Chicago, but close).... and they were unknown in Russia.
In the machine shops of Tallinn round the clock shifts worked on another idea. Meta's brother Arnold was part of the crew welding armor plate to train carriages to create 2 armored trains. A major rail line ran from Tallinn to St. Petersburg, the Russian supply line behind the center of their line. Laidoner thought the same tracks could be used for more than supplies for each side.
Finally, Christmas night, 1918 when artillery flashes could be seen from the fighting 25 miles east, a ship docked in Tallinn. Finnish General Mannerheim was fighting desperately across the Gulf but he thought his fellow Finno-Ugrics could use a hand. 1000 men of a Finnish regiment marched through town, cheered and blessed with frozen tears by the populace, Christmas trees forgotten. Even Arnold and his new brother-in-law Alfred were given a few minutes off from work in the railyard to cheer on the Finns.
By early January, 1919 the front was 15 miles away. The men were sadly under-trained and few (although even the Danes sent 200 to help) but it was now or never. Laidoner unleashed a desperate offensive. Right flank had men inventing tactics for using machine guns on offense. In the center the armored trains flamed out unanswerable thunder and track gangs rebuilt rails as the Russian retreat began. On the left a fledgling marine force kept making landings on the sea flank under cover of an enthusiastic navy.
By Feb. 24, 1919 on the first anniversary of independence Laidoner was able to announce to the provisional government Estonian soil was clear of enemy soldiers. It stayed clear until the Treaty of Tartu in Jan., 1920.
Thus endeth today's lesson in East European history.
"Mu isamaa "My fatherland
mu kaunis maa my lovely land
mu kallis isamaa..." my beloved fatherland..."