A Slower Recount pace on Saturday here in Minnesota but some news and tidbits.
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. Good Kossacks know speculation, side issues (like egg coffee and lutefisk), digressions and over-the-toppery make politics much more enjoyable. Recommends will keep this rolling through the day.
Hat tips yesterday to JedL, who posted a great picture of a challenged ballot, which touched off both serious discussion of Lizard people (complete w/ Cindy McCain) and more light-hearted stuff regarding some recount in Minnesota involving a senate seat.
To the Orange fold.......and beyond.
First, the list of handy links:
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/
Minnesota Public Radio has pictures of some of the disputed/questionable ballots so you too can play election judge: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/...
Yesterday's Diary in this Series (A bunch of stuff beyond the Sec. of State's update: wingnuts, communists, UN-challenging ballots, some JOE power, ballots playing hide and seek, and recount humor from baseball to TV shlock) at this link:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
- From the Sec. of State's Office: 8:00pm CT 11/22/08 Saturday eve. (NOTE: County totals needed to be faxed in to Ritchie's office by 6:00pm to be included in these numbers. Star Tribune and other sources may have later numbers that will be included tomorrow.)
Total Ballots reported counted since start of recount: 65.65% (Wednesday's count was 15 pct. points. Thursday's count was about 27 percentage points. Friday's count reported to the Sec. of State's office was 18 1/2 pct. points. As expected Saturday's count was much smaller, only 4.79%)
Coleman 808785= -669 from election night in these same precincts.
Franken 783401= -621 from election night in these same precincts.
BOTH candidates have lost votes on the recount, but this is a net swing TO Al Franken of 48 votes (Wed. was 43 net to Al, and Thursday was, by coincidence, 43 net to Al. Friday was 14 net to Al. The big news is Saturday's counting was a net swing to Norm by 52, moving him back ahead of Al.)
SO the simple math is Coleman's lead at the start 215-48= 167
Even though this was by far the slowest day of the recount it was clearly Al Franken's worst for closing the gap on Norm Coleman. Coleman widened his lead, erasing yesterday's net swing of 14 to Franken and chewing through a lot of Thursday's swing of 43 to Franken. Other reaction and comments below.
- Also from the Sec. of State's office:
Franken has challenged 945 "Coleman & other" ballots statewide.
Coleman has challenged 948 "Franken & other" ballots statewide.
Those 945+948= 1893 ballots will go to the State Canvassing Board for final decisions.
N.B. According to the Sec. of State website, these running recount totals do NOT include the challenged ballots. So to take Al's case, he is down 621 votes net from Nov. 4th NOT including the 948 ballots Coleman challenged. (If you WOULD take them into account Al's total would be 621 + 948= MINUS 1569 from election night. By the same method Norm's numbers would be 669 + 945 = MINUS 1614 from election night.)
The challenged ballots continue to pile up for the canvassing board at 1893. As noted yesterday this 1893 is also a NET figure, and not just net of adding up both camps challenged ballots. Apparently either camp can UN-challenge a ballot (apparently just by notifying somebody; could be Sec. of State Ritchie, or could be the county auditor of the ballot in question, but they do NOT need to notify the press/public about it.) So the 1893 would best be thought of as "best case" scenarios for each camp; it also means some of the more "obvious" or even "frivolous" challenges (e.g. Lizard people, stray pencil mark on the back of a ballot) may well be withdrawn before the Board ever has to take a look at it.
- Duchschere of the Star Tribune (in a Sat. eve. story) notes with Saturday's limited counting nonetheless 53 counties (out of 87 total) have completed their recounts. He cites some comments from Coleman observers around the Twin Cities metro, but it sounds like the Franken campaign has taken a leaf from Obama for some message discipline:
Corlyss Affeldt, of Eden Prairie (new money SW Minneapolis suburb), is a Coleman volunteer who worked for 9 hours on Thursday in Bloomington and Richfield (middle-class, S Minneapolis suburbs). "I’m doing it because I want to make sure it’s right ...that seems to be the prevailing motivation right now: I just want it right," she said.
Another Coleman volunteer, Lynda Bodin, a dental hygienist from Wayzata (small city due W of Mpls, engulfed by suburbs), said: "If you stayed home (on election day) thinking your vote doesn’t count, this proves it does."
Nick Heille, of Minneapolis, who has served as an election judge, also volunteered for Coleman and praised the recount.
"The process is extraordinarily honest," said Heille, a retired tech specialist for Hennepin County. "I continue to marvel at it. It’s a very strong system and people don’t abuse it. "
Franken observers said they were instructed to direct media inquires to the campaign spokesmen.
- JOE power leashed. Rising star JOE Mansky, Ramsey county (St. Paul) elections director has been running a very tight ship, vigorously applying the "frivolous challenges prohibited" rule. At the end of the 1st day's count on Wednesday Ramsey County had 13 ballots challenged. Mansky called a huddle with Coleman and Franken attorneys and between them whittled that total down to ONE.
Now it appears the Ramsey County Attorney's office has told Mansky to kick the challenged ballots "upstairs" to the canvassing board. (Ducheschere again:)
"Challenged ballots spiked in Ramsey County, where the county attorney's office squelched negotiations that had limited challenged ballots the first two days of the recount and observers from both campaigns questioned voters' intentions far more broadly than before.
Ramsey County Election Manager Joe Mansky, who had negotiated down challenged ballots Wednesday and Thursday with the campaigns, was told by Assistant County Attorney Darwin Lookingbill to "punt all the disputed ballots to the Canvassing Board. So that's what we will do," Mansky said.
Mansky said he thought both campaigns have instructed observers to issue challenges more widely."
Mansky's last observation fits the facts (with their well-known liberal bias). As of Friday night's Sec. of State report, almost 61% of the votes recounted had generated 1525 challenges between the 2 sides. Yesterday less than 5% of ballots were recounted statewide, but 368 challenged ballots were added to the State Canvassing board's pile.
Brief tidbits from here and there
- From TheUpTake a report there are 167 rejected absentee ballots in Hennepin County (Minneapolis and many suburbs) out of a 80,000 total recounted. State Canvssing Board meets Wednesday to "discuss" (and who knows? Maybe to decide what to do with such rejected ballots around the state, which by some reports total more than 1000).......Hopeful thoughts: Hibbing and Virginia (2 towns in the northern counties bordering Canada) have been recounting their respective rural votes, not yet the town votes. Franken won heavily in both (13K and 4K votes in each town, respectively.)....Also, same approach in St. Louis County where non-Duluth city votes have been mostly recounted up to now).....through some complicated math and informed speculation (ALWAYS the best approach to take on Daily KOS :-)) some of the commenters at UpTake figure abbout 900 new votes have been counted in this recount compared to election night (ie votes machines couldn't read but humans can) but these don't show much because of the number of challenged ballots......
- And NOW, having convinced all of you that clean elections are the result of cold weather, Scandinavian genes, egg coffee and staying upwind from lutefisk, that Minnesotans are paragons of political virtue who would NEVER pull a hanging chad fiasco, Florida-style, and who would consider it UNTHINKABLE to have a "Landslide" Lyndon Johnson finagle (where several days after the election a very late reporting precinct reported in over 200 votes for Lyndon, with the names in the voter registration sign-in book in the exact order of the names on the property tax rolls)
YES WE CAN pull election tricks in Minnesota! How about this from the Pioneer Press (St. Paul daily paper) in a background story on other recounts we have known and loved.
The race: 2002 Minnesota State Senate election
The candidates: Republican state Sen. Grace Schwab and DFL (Minnesotan for "Democrat") challenger Dan Sparks.
The 2002 Austin (Southern central MN along the Iowa line) state Senate race was hot during the campaigning and got hotter after Election Day results showed a 33-vote difference between Schwab and Sparks. A three-day recount ensued, the candidates challenged 32 ballots, and after a state canvassing board settled those ballots, Sparks(D) led by 11 votes. Schwab(R), represented by Fritz Knaak — now Norm Coleman's lead recount attorney — decided to contest the canvassing board's decision.
That was in part because of the little problem of the burned ballots. On the evening of the election, according to a Mower County Court opinion, the tally of voters who signed in and the number of ballots didn't sync. There were 17 ballots too many. So, a DFL election judge chose 17 ballots and "removed them, obtained a brown plastic bag, and drove them to her home." Then she did as she told a Republican election judge she was going to do: "The DFL election judge intentionally destroyed the ballots by burning them in her fireplace," according to the opinion. Despite arguments about how those ballots should be counted, a Mower County judge decided on Jan. 6, 2003, that they should not be counted at all. The next day, Schwab conceded the election and Sparks was sworn in.
OK, gotta get out to sing in the choir. Lutheran coffee awaits. I'll leave you with the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.