As bronte17 insists in the comments, apparently I need to start my diary immediately with the fact that the WSJ article was incorrect and then ask readers to assist in clarifying the situation. This despite the fact that I only brought it up because I didn't know whether or not it was incorrect. Sort of all moot now, because Nate Silver already addressed this foolish stat (see below).
Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal today about the Franken/Coleman recount in Minnesota. In addition to referencing Bush v. Gore about a dozen times, despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Bush v. Gore is not to be used as a precedent for any future cases, he drops this fact, which I have never heard before:
All told, the recount in 25 precincts ended up producing more votes than voters who signed in that day.
[updates below]
Well, that doesn't sound good.
Why have I not heard of this before? If there are more votes than voters, then something has gone terribly wrong, hasn't it?
I think I need somebody to talk me down(ⓒRachel Maddow) from this one. Was the Minnesota Senate Recount unfair?
[update] I believe this little factoid to be completely untrue. I am merely posting this to try to figure out where this talking point came from. I'm not a troll. Check out evenson.dailykos.com and read my other posts. I'm an argumentative prick, but I'm not a troll.
[update #2] OK, if it's really as simple as commenters are saying below, that Mr. Paulsen is referring to voters who signed in that day in order to invalidate absentee ballots for the purpose of setting up a blatant lie, then fine. Sean Hannity does stuff like this between every commercial break. But that would be so blatant a lie, I really don't buy it as an explanation. Virtually every precinct in America would have more votes than voters under that scenario. Do you guys really think that's what he means?
[update #3] To: michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
From: Me.
Subject: 25 precincts in MN recount ended up producing more votes than voters?
Mr. Paulsen,
I read your editorial in the Wall Street Journal this morning with great interest, as I am a Minnesota resident and a proponent of fairness and accuracy in elections. I am also an Al Franken supporter.
There is much in your editorial that I could take issue with, but there's one statement in particular that I found quite surprising, and I cannot find any sources to substantiate your claim. It is this:
"All told, the recount in 25 precincts ended up producing more votes than voters who signed in that day."
Now, this fact sounds quite scandalous indeed, and taken by itself is strong evidence that the recount was at the least very shoddily performed, and at worst outright election fraud.
However, I have followed this election recount quite closely from the beginning, and this fact is news to me. Can you tell me where it comes from? I find it disturbing that I'm just hearing about this now, over two months after Election Day.
Please don't tell me that you used the term "voters who signed in that day" as a sneaky way to invalidate the very idea of absentee voting.
Sincerely,
Me.
[update #4] As AnotherMassachusettsLiberal points out in the comments, Nate Silver already addressed and dismissed this made-up fact ten days ago:
There are 25 precincts with more ballots than voters? I'm not sure this is actually true. There were certain precincts with more votes counted during the recount than there were on Election Night -- which is not surprising, considering that the whole purpose of a hand recount is to find votes that the machine scanners missed the first time around. I have not seen any evidence, on the other hand, that there are precincts with more votes than voters as recorded on sign-in sheets. And the Coleman campaign evidently hasn't either, or it presumably would have presented it to the Court, which rejected its petition for lack of evidence.
Also, note the weasel-wordy phrase "by some estimates", which translates as "by the Coleman campaign's estimate". There is no intrinsic reason why Franken ballots are more likely to be duplicated than Coleman ballots, especially when one significant source of duplicate ballots is military absentees, a group that presumably favors the Republicans. Coleman, indeed, only became interested in the issue of duplicates once he fell behind in the recount and needed some way to extend his clock. Before then, his lead attorney had sent an e-mail to Franken which said that challenges on the issue of duplicate ballots were "groundless and frivolous".