Another big day of counting on Thursday, so I'm starting this Thursday night for a running start on Friday. I've got the early shift tomorrow so I'll head out right after a Star Tribune encapsulation.
As the title proclaims, please feel free to use this diary for MN-Sen Recount comments, on the ground reports, local color, pictures and links; AND..... be good Kossacks; you know, engage in WILD Speculation! (And I'm not talkin' the local team and the Stanley Cup either.) Recommends will keep it rolling for the day.
Hat tips to friends of Minnesota yesterday with diaries: TomTech, The Big E, the graphic (stupefyingly so) Vote for America, and, oh, that Kos kid had something up a couple times on the Front Page. (Man. Twice for a kid in orange. George Soros must really like him.)
Sooooo...to the Orange fold.......and beyond.
Handy stuff:
MN Sec. of State Website: http://www.sos.state.mn.us/...
Star Tribune Almost Real Time Recount Map thingy: http://www.startribune.com/...
New Media links:
The UpTake (includes videos): http://www.theuptake.org/
Minnesota Publius: http://mnpublius.com/
Yesterday's Diary in this Series: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Minnesota Public Radio has pictures of some of the disputed/questionable ballots so you too can play election judge: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/...
Thursday Night Updates:
- From the Sec. of State's Office: 8:00pm CT 11/20/08
Total Ballots reported counted since start of recount: 42.33% (up from yesterday's 15%+, so a good, BIG day counting; better than 25% of the total votes cast. (Way to go you egg coffee addicts! Have another lefse!)
Coleman 534475= -212 from election night in these same precincts.
Franken 494804= -126 from election night in these same precincts.
So BOTH lost votes on the recount, but this is a net swing TO Al Franken of 86 votes (and oddly, 43 AGAIN like yesterday's 43).
SO the simple math is Coleman's lead at the start 215-86= 129
ALSO: Franken has challenged 374 "Coleman & other" ballots statewide.
Coleman has challenged 360 "Franken & other" ballots statewide.
Those 374+360= 734 ballots will go to the State Canvassing Board for final decisions.
N.B. The running recount totals do NOT include the challenged ballots. So to take Al's case, he is down 126 votes net from Nov. 4th NOT including the 360 ballots Coleman challenged. (If you WOULD take them into account Al's total would be 126 + 360= MINUS 486 from election night.) Same with Norm's numbers.
- Everyone recounting is being very careful, but also trying to keep things moving. But for speed of counting nobody's going to touch these 2 precincts from St. Louis County. (Duluth, but the county stretches north LONG to the Canadian border. The town of Embarass makes the national news from time to time as in "the cold spot in the lower 48 states last night at MINUS 47 was Embarass, MN") Larry Oakes writes for the Star Tribune Online:
You might call them "ballots from the boonies."
Recount workers in St. Louis County this morning dispensed quickly with two precincts -- one with one ballot to count; the other with two.
Unorganized Precinct 6's single vote was cast for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. The 48-square-mile precinct is in a heavily forested area just south of Hoyt Lakes. The two voters in Unorganized Precinct 20 -- a 36-square-mile tract of similarly sparse wilderness between Embarass and Babbitt -- both cast their ballots for Democratic challenger Al Franken.
"These are wilderness areas where they might have to drive 50 miles to vote, so we arrange for them to vote by mail," said Paul Tynjala, the county's director of elections. Trouble is, the county's ballot vendor has a 50-ballot minimum, and each precinct must have it's own ballots.
"So we order 50 ballots so that one guy can vote," Tynjala said.
For the record: The results in both precincts are unchanged from Election Day.
And there were no challenges.
It literally chokes me up with pride reading that son of Finland Tynjala matter-of-factly saying they are willing to throw away 49 blank ballots for the sake of one voter. Its ordinary....and amazing, both at once. Edasi Tynjala!! WAY TO GO!!
- I'm sure Franken partisans on this site (and upholders of the Constitution and common sense everywhere) remember Ramsey County (St. Paul) elections manager Joe Mansky laying the lumber to a particularly obstreperous Coleman recount watcher. (Be careful Coleman! Democrats have JOE POWER this year! Joe Biden and now Joe Mansky. All the Joe YOU'VE got is a plumber NOT named Joe, and the south Senator end of a northbound Connecticut horse named Joe.)
Well there's this little tidbit from Wednesday with Joe Mansky in action, as reported over at The UpTake:
[Comment From cgseife]
I absolutely agree that individual personalities of the challengers are important. Yesterday AM, Ramsey County, one table got a little out of hand. A Coleman observer challenged 5 ballots that were bubbled in properly and had no obvious flaws -- but the challenger complained that Franken bubble was a wee bit lighter than the other bubbles. To his credit, Joe Mansky immediately dismissed the challenges as frivolous.
Go JOE!!
- Point of Information. County Recount boards can count as long as they want on a given day. If they want results to be included in the SoS update every night at 8:00pm (CT) they need to fax in their tallies by 6:00pm.
(Wednesday Olmsted County--Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic--- went until 10pm in a 14 hour marathon so they could recount all 76000 county ballots in one effort! Now that is SERIOUS Recount power!)
- I'm no number cruncher like Nate Silver but I used the Star Tribune Map last night around 10pm to produce this: (differs from Sec. of State counts and so does NOT match up with the update in #1, above, but should give some idea.)
Total Minnesota Counties = 87
Counties not yet started recount = 27
Counties started w/ no change OR recounted and no net change= 14
Of the remaining 46 counties 36 are finished recounting and 10 are partially done. Norm Coleman won 32 of these counties on Nov. 4 and Al Franken won 14. So far, in the 32 "Coleman counties" the recount has given Coleman a net gain in 17 counties and Franken in 15 counties. Combining Norm's gains in these 17 against Al's gains in his 15, Norm pulls ahead by 8 votes.
So far, in the 14 "Franken counties" (which includes the 3 largest: Hennepin (Minneapolis metro), Ramsey (St. Paul and some suburbs) and St. Louis (Duluth)) the recount has given Franken a net gain in 12 counties and Coleman in 2 counties. Combining Al's gains in these 12 against Norm's gains in his 2, Al pulls ahead by 88 votes.
I find it hopeful (maybe wishful thinking?) that Franken is breaking even on the recount in counties Coleman won, but producing some visible gains in counties he carried on Nov. 4. Going forward are a few factors at cross-purposes: a) of the 27 counties yet to start recounting (and some start Friday; given their size they may also finish on Friday) Norm led in 22, Al in only 5. But if Al pretty much breaks even on the 22 and gets ahead a bit in 5...... b) Al's strength continues to show in the largest counties, and the numbers left to recount are huge. Norm beat Al in Red Lake county (NW woods country) 984 to 834, a margin of 150 and no changes at all after the recount (and no challenges from either side.) Al beat Norm in Hennepin county +329,000 to 237,000+, a margin of almost 92000 and 43% recounted so far. Al's margin in Hennepin county offsets Red Lake's margin by a factor of 69X. It may not help you but I find this oddly comforting.
Friday morning:
- MN Sec. of State's Office will hold a news conference today at 3:30pm. Some local press are hoping to get a closer look at some of the disputed/challenged ballots. (I think they're looking for more Lizard People votes.) TheUptake sounds like they will cover it in video, possibly streaming at their site.
- Lopez & Von Sternberg (surely a couple of Swedes) get front and center on the headline story today in the Star Tribune, leading with a Roseville voter who voted absentee whose ballot was rejected in Ramsey County, the sort of goof-up Franken seems he's getting ready to use just in case. (Star Trib scoreboard numbers are: Margin +136, Coleman/ Total ballots challenged 823/ 46% counted-- all higher than the Sec. of State's numbers from 8:00pm last night.)
3 pages inside. Franken press sec. Barr reports they've received lists of names of rejected absentee ballots from about 36 counties so far. Coleman legal honcho Knaak thinks its all to set up a post-recount court challenge. (Ya think?)........ Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert has added four more tables of counters at a warehouse location to keep things moving in the recount of 131 city precincts. A Coleman monitor on location says Reichert and her staffers have made it "an open and fair process....Its easy to be nonpartisan when the stakes aren't so high and the results aren't so close. This is the real test." (Right on, Pat Shortridge; and thanks for the kudos to Reichert for her fairness.)
There are 2 LTEs. The Edina writer (SW Minneapolis suburb, old money; nickname from surrounding suburbs: The Cake-eaters-- h/t to Marie Antoinette) complains Franken's court win making names of rejected absentee voters publicly available (you know, like Minnesota law says) would lead to campaign staffers contacting voters--- and this "should trouble us all." Franken's "personal desperation to find victory in the ashes of defeat" leads him to destroy the sacred democratic notion of voter privacy.
The Maple Grove writer (NW exurb, fast growing and shiny) says Norm Coleman should prove his respect for the voters by stopping his whining and let the system work and count the votes, including absentees.
- This whole thing might well come down to the challenged ballots sent to the state canvassing board for final disposition after Dec. 5. You've seen pictures at the Minn. Public Radio website of what some voters do to their ballot (apparently these are a new set of pix from Thursdays recount, not just the ones from Wednesday.) But what about ruling on them? What are the odds? The Star Tribune quotes our rising star from Ramsey County, Joe Mansky, in his Joe Power!
The number of challenged ballots continued to increase Thursday, reaching 823. Mansky -- who worked from 1984 to 1999 in the secretary of state's office and is widely considered the state's foremost elections expert -- said that people shouldn't expect many of those challenges to bear fruit.
"I can only remember two ballot challenges in all those years that were sustained," he said, meaning that the campaign lawyers' views prevailed over the opinion of election judges.
He said he wouldn't be surprised if campaign lawyers negotiate a reduction in the number of challenged ballots before the Canvassing Board meets next month to go through them.
The same issues come up regularly, Mansky said -- one filled-in oval with a faint dot in another (typically voters tapping their pens on the ballot as they read it), two ovals filled in with one crossed out, which "comes up every election."
The third most common challenge, Mansky said, involves stray marks on the ballot. State law prohibits identifying marks, such as initials, because they can signal vote fraud. "If they don't jump out as an attempt to identify the ballot, they should be counted," Mansky said.
(This clipping cites the Star Tribune count of challenged ballots, which differs for now from the Sec. of State count from last night.) And yeah, I can see how both sides might meet to cut down the number of challenges with some horse trading, just to make it easier on the Canvassing Board. And I find it sort of reassuring to hear Mansky saying basically, "Here's 3 routine things we see every election, every canvass, every recount. No big deal. Here's how we handled them before..."
Cool. I can buy this. No drama. No hysterics. Just another day at the office. And for me that stolid "ordinariness" seems like a strong defense against any sort of "Brooks Brothers" riot, Florida-style, from happening here. (Channels the ghost of Hunter Thompson; tones down language) I can just see Mansky or Judge Gearin of the Board looking at some pesky bunch of "operatives" chanting "Stop the count" and saying in a flat monotone that could freeze a Minnesota lake in July, "Touch one ballot or try to break up this meeting and I'll bite your arm off and use it to beat the snot out the rest of those scum behind you."
Testamonial Moment OK I gotta say this. Stepping back from the nuts & bolts of the counting, speculation, and anecdotes I'm finding myself choked up with tears brimming for no apparent reason about every 15 minutes of writing this series and maybe I've figured out why.
Little old ladies in Bemidji coming out to count. Hawk-eyed lawyers who have faced each other at the courthouse in St. Cloud verbally sparring across a citizen's ballot. An unemployed pipe-fitter in Redwood Falls solemnly counting ballots into a group of 25 while his neighbors, a welder, a cashier, and a church secretary, count with him under their breath.
"Minnesota, hats off to thee...." (from the University fight song); the words are right but this is far more dignified and far bigger than Minnesota. This is Norman Rockwell come to life. This is "government OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people"
in the flesh. This IS the people, securing "the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity" before our very eyes.
This is my schoolboy patriotism and righteous civic pride welling up, throwing into tawdry relief the political carnival-barking, spin and fraudsters of the past years as just false, putrid, petty and blaring venality.
I say this before God and all of you: whoever goes to the Senate, whether I voted for him or not, whether I support him or work to unseat him, goes to the Senate by a fair, clean, democratic process that produced the correct result, as accurate as humanly possible. Unlike Florida 2000, unlike Ohio 2004, this will be CASE CLOSED.
(Steps down from soapbox; music begins) http://www.youtube.com/...
I need to find a flag to salute, and a hand to shake. (Sniff!)
OK I can see the bottom of my Cleveland Browns coffee mug, so I'll set it down on my ballot coaster and leave you with the news yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.