Franken leads +225 (+21 of the "Nauen61" the Elections Contest Court has ordered into the "Ready to Count" pile at he the Secretary of State's office; and now +14 of the "Nauen61" have ALSO been ordered and added; all these voters have indicated they voted for Franken)= +260.
Franken's side will try again today to "rest their case."
No decision from ECC on Franken Motion to Dismiss (Day 8 since filing.)
The Nauen61 noted above continue to dwindle.....toward Franken. Today they get a day in court.
And Norm's campaign seems to have allowed confidential information from donors onto the internet.
Those are the headers. The footers, kneelers, waisters and chesters are just past the Orange fold........
1) Election Contest Court Episode XXXVIII The Unresting Resting
Court was scheduled to begin at 1:30 for a 1/2 session Wednesday. Franken's team would call a last few witnesses, get its last bits of evidence lined up and submitted and then "provisionally" Rest their case.
Didn't work out. For one thing, one of their final witnesses was Auditor for Clay County (Moorhead, as in Fargo-Morehead, way up on the MN-NoDak line. Minnesotans in that area sometimes describe it as "Fargo is across the river from US.") The 8-12 inches of new, blowing snow on top of new ice made travel down I-94 impossible. They hope to reschedule for today; if not, there was even talk of conducting examination by phone.
2) Last Minute Subpoenas
The ECC did lay out a brief timeline: This morning the Nauen side case will get a hearing (see #4 below). Franken will get final witnesses after lunch and then rest provisionally. Coleman will open rebuttal on Friday.
Coleman lead attorney Joe Friedberg complained Friday for rebuttal was too soon (basically the old: "no one could have anticipated we'd have to be ready so soon.") The Court said have at least 2 witnesses ready to go. (They didn't say "or else" but there was a faint echo of "Talk Like a Gangster Day" in the exchange.)
Now rebuttal is just that: Coleman gets to call limited witnesses to answer back Franken testimony and evidence.
But the Coleman team continues to perform "Leona Helmsley does St. Paul" and act like laws and rules are for "little people." It came out the Coleman legal team on Tuesday night beginning around 11:00pm (WHOA! and one ECC judge asked, "What time did you say?") sent out a series of e-mail, fax, maybe Blackberry (and hell, as far as I know, carrier pigeon and dogsled) SUBPOENAs to various county election officials around the state asking/demanding them again provide answers to Coleman questions. (We saw this show last week, trying to get into evidence answers and opinions without allowing cross-examination or even court appearances.)
Franken moved to quash them all on grounds this is UN-resting the main Coleman case ("case in chief") and has nothing to do with rebuttal testimony. ECC took it under advisement and then issued a late day order turning down a bunch, allowing a little (about a rebuttal-sized portion.) I know, I know: fairness by the court; give every opportunity; cut off routes of appeal; all of those apply to the ECC action and I do appreciate them. But its wearing....
(The top link dated 3/11: http://www.mncourts.gov/...
3) Last-er Minute Spreadsheets; Ahhhh, Norm?
Yesterday was also the due date for Team Norm to submit their final (in their case ALWAYS semi-final; semi on so many levels) list of ballots they believe the court should open and count, that is, the last reading on the Coleman Universe. Total count: 1360, down from 1725, from 2000, from 3300, from 4623, from 4797, from 10962.
And of all people, Pat Doyle of (gasp!) the Star Trib is up with some analysis of the 1360. Taking Pat with a big gnaw off the corner of the salt block, he slices the 1360 2 ways:
Nearly half of the ballots on the list had no documentation of absentee ballot applications, and about a third no evidence of ballot return envelopes.
Half of 1360= 680; 1/3 = 453. The ECC has been very particular about things like undocumented applications and return envelopes. so the math here is 1360 - (689+453= 1142) = 218!
Ahhhh Norm? Thats less than the lead.......
The Star Trib also did a county by county work-up of where the 1360 are coming from, how many might have gone/ will go for Barkley etc. and summarized:
If the ballots identified by Coleman were allocated to the candidates based on the percentage of the vote they got in each county, he would pick up 596 votes, Franken would pick up 539 and other candidates would get 225.
Since Doyle decided NOT to do the math for his readers, allow me: 596-539 = 57 Net to Coleman.
Ahhhh Norm? Thats less than the lead......
Not content to leave spreadsheet analysis in the uncertain hands of Pat Doyle, Mark Elias of the Franken legal team at the presser also offered an analysis of the 1360. He noted that ALL of them had been covered in last Thursday's Franken Motion to Dismiss (Day 8, still no ruling from the ECC), covered in the "Great Coleman Countdown". Having recapped that, Elias felt the number of ballots on the Coleman spreadsheet that will be counted will be....ZERO. Zip. Nada. Nil. Mitte midagi!
Ahhhhh Norm? Thats less than the lead.....
4) Francis Marion's Charles Nauen's Trial Day
Today is the day "Swamp Fox" Charles Nauen gets a longer turn in front of the ECC to argue the "Nauen61" voters cases to get their absentee votes counted. The Franken team has provided $ and legal support to these voters and to Nauen. Nauen is the guerrilla leader out in the forests and back alleys of MN picking off little clusters of Franken votes. 21 of his group of 61 have been ordered put on the "Ready to Count" pile over at the Secretary of State's Office.
Well yesterday the court made a move and issued an ORDER on behalf of the latter-day Francis Marion: 14 more ballots of Nauen's 61 will be added to the "Ready to Count Pile." Voters of the 21 and of the 14 have all indicated they voted for Franken, so it ain't official yet, but you can at least pencil in +35 to the state certified lead of +225 or +260.
By my count, 61-21-14 = 26; Nauen will be making his case for these 26. Both Coleman and Franken attorneys will be in the room and can support or raise objections so this morning could be rather multi-sided.
(Cripes! With 3 judges and 3 groups of attorneys they should lay out a huge Chinese Checkers board and hand out 60 marbles in 6 different colors. "Yellow (Judge Reilly) forward left, right, left, and a side left, stopping between a red and a green. Objection sustained.")
Given Nauen's tireless efforts, anybody willing to bet against him getting in a few more of these 26? Mr. Nauen, "well done, good and faithful servant."
5) The Great Coleman Computer Hack/Flap
Back in January the Coleman camp tried a "Lieberman" maneuver: put up a fund-raising appeal on their website and then report the site had crashed due to overwhelming response by Minnesotans and Real Americans everywhere rushing to make a donation to Norm.
MN Publius was on top of that before sunset (and in January in MN that is getting on it RIGHT AWAY) pulling back the computer geek curtain and showing nothing like that happened. Instead the Coleman IT people had basically had their computers query themselves in a loop and then they turned them off, claiming overload. (It was a bit more sophisticated than that, but a sham all the way.)
Well a quick blurb yesterday morning built up all day long that the "Coleman for Senate" website had been hacked (spin story); no wait, had left some of their donor spreadsheets (300 page download) available for reading: like donor name, address, amount, employment place last 4 digits of a credit card, and the CREDIT CARD SECURITY CODE (that 3 digit number on the back of a CC you enter sometimes to prove you are looking at the physical card.) This last is a MAJOR, FINE-ABLE No-no in the credit world and in all 50 states.
[Comment From Shlif]
Coleman donor data breached in January, but donors alerted by Wikileaks not campaign http://government.zdnet.com/...
After Wikileaks put out a report that Coleman's donors' credit card data had been stolen in January, and after Wikileaks posted information to people warning them of that data breach in March, Coleman's people are now saying that they want an investigation into how the information got posted onto the internet (i.e. the Wikileaks posting), rather than admitting the campaign had a data breach in January and failed to report it to potential victims as required by law.
MN Publius was up with the story here, under the appropriate headline, "Coleman Campaign Lying..." http://mnpublius.com/ Lots of links in Aaron's story.
MN Independent had reactions from Coleman donors, some of who are subscribers to the Limbaugh Lint-brain Network of Talking Points, claiming this was being done by the Franken campaign to embarrass/smear Norm the Golden boy: http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
I know NOTHING about computers except I like my Mac, but a blogger with I.T. expertise posted that a stunt like this apparently is in the "slap my face, I can't believe they did that" category. (Ole runs up to Sven waving a magazine article: "Sven, look at dis. It says here lots of Norwegians have low, sloping foreheads. Vy do you tink dat is?" Sven gives himself tremendous, full-on palm slap above his own eyebrows and answers, "Danged if I know, Ole!")
[Comment From Palpitations]
I'd also just like to point out, as someone who has web/database admin experience, the fact that a backup of the database was simply tarred and gzipped in a folder that was accessible is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Even if the directory listing wasn't available, that's just a very, very bad idea. It's not like it's hard to backup to somewhere outside of the web root. Backups do not belong in varwww !
Well now I speak English, Estonian and Southern, some Spanish, a bit of Greek and Hebrew, and a touch of German and Latin. But have not the FAINTEST idea what "Palpitations" means by this. It sounds awful (you know, like having to be Ben Ginsberg's dentist without a mask) so I'll take his/her word for it. Anyone who can translate at least from Geek to Greek I would appreciate (just get it into aorist subjunctive in optative mood (Koine if you can) and I can dope it out from there.)
One of the Wikileaks e-mails cited a blog post by Adria Richards, a Minneapolis-based technology consultant who said she read in January about the supposed breach of Coleman's site and went there herself out of curiosity.
Richards said in an interview that she quickly found private information, including a link to a database, that was accessible to anyone with a decent understanding of Web servers. She took several screen captures of the pages and posted them to her blog.
"I'm not a hacker. My goal is not to dig into other peoples' insecurities, but just to identify them," said Richards, who added that she didn't download or even open the database.
Richards said she had nothing against Coleman. "I would have done this if it was a Republican or a Democrat," she said.
Comment From Andrew in VA]
According to a friend whose opinion I trust, the fact that the Coleman donor database contains credit card security codes is a violation of their agreement with Visa/Mastercard. Those numbers are not supposed to be retained by anyone.
[Comment From Palpitations]
I think it's important to note, as often as possible, that it's not just a list of credit card information. It's a list of credit card information that was illegally stored in violation of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. All of the comments talking about breaches of security, and blame being placed on others seems to ignore that fact. Simply put: if Coleman was in compliance with the law, that sensitive information would not have been there for anyone to find.
Now that you know what happens in OTHER people's websites, you can go visit a GOOD website and even make a SECURE, SAFE donation here:
https://secure.alfranken.com/...
Thursday Morning Minnesota Media
Yuo've already got a taste of the Star Trib article but they are still serving a time out on links in these diaries after Sunday's blithering mess.
The Pioneer Press runs the AP story from Brian Baskt mostly focusing on the Coleman donor database flap:
http://www.twincities.com/...
There were a few posts on the UpTake yesterday reporting that Pioneer Press reporter Rachel Stassen Berger has landed a book deal to write up the Senate Recount. Way to go Rachel! (And who's your agent? Who's the publisher? Does the publisher want a 2 book deal, with... ahem... SOMEONE writing the ah,.... "companion" to your "reporter's story"? And BTW Rachel, I hereby publicly REGISTER everything WINEREV connected on DailyKos, including trademarking your moniker here of RSB..... but we can talk. Have your people call my people......)
Jay Weiner put up some good stuff at the Minn Post here:
http://www.minnpost.com/...
The wonderfully named Grace Kelly of the MNProgressive Project was up at WineRev hours with a near 1:00am report on the Coleman credit card breach.
http://www.mnprogressiveproject.com/
Oh, and I should ask: HEY MARKOS! (I don't have your e-mail.) Some of the folks on these boards have said they want me to put up a personal pay-pal link so they can send a freewill, tax-deductible (NOT true), LOVE-offering to the WineRev as a thank-you. Any rules about this? How about rules that apply to diary series that go for 100 installments? If not, OK. If so, show me how to put up the Paypal link and help send a WineRev to Pittsburgh for Net Roots Nation in August.
Court is back at 9:00amCDT. Hope this is enough for the morning for all of you from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.