Franken leads +225 (+21 and +14 of the "Nauen61" the Elections Contest Court has ordered into the "Ready to Count" pile at the the Secretary of State's office; all these voters have indicated they voted for Franken)= +260.
No orders or decisions from the Elections Contest Court as of this morning. Now the 12th day since both sides filed their "proposed Findings of Fact." 16th day since closing arguments.
Some thinking... A Franken sighting...... a bit of diary time about a book of diaries that are being booked.... just past the Orange fold....
16 Days since final arguments were heard and not a peep from the Elections Contest Court (ECC).
All we have is our speculations and wonderings.
Intelligent Journalistic Ponderings (you know, the complete opposite of the Lamestream Media and the Faux Noise pole-dancing company)
Jay Weiner writes for the Minn Post and has been covering the trial in depth for weeks. He has a think piece up at the link below and sketches out 4 scenarios:
A) The ECC is being picky in looking at anywhere from 300 to 1300 absentee ballots. (They were quite strict in their rulings so far). Having picked the nits down to the last bit of navel lint they issue an order to count X number of ballots...these (and they note every one of them, county by county, name by name.)
The Secretary of State's office would do the counting and they have stated they need four days to collect the ballots from around the state and get to it.
This much has been expected for some time so there is some mystery why this HASN'T been ordered already.
B) Because of the (apparent) delay could a larger ruling/decision be in the works? The ECC could order A), above AND also add some decisions on:
> the Minneapolis 133 ballots that went missing (favoring Franken by net +46) but for whom we have voter sign-in logs and machine tapes
> the alleged duplicate/double counted/never actually shown to have happened/Pam Howell testimony ballots that might favor Franken +100 net.
> some equal protection issues
Since this would be more work they need longer (although its getting rather longish for this scenario I think.)
C) The ECC could order A) and see how they come out. If Franken's lead grows to say, 500, and THEN rule on the Mpls 133/duplicate 100 when it wouldn't make any difference.
Does seem a bit out of character for the court.
D) The ECC might have the Nauen 35 and the 12 others from early on counted. Then they nerve themselves to accept Franken's Motion to Dismiss from 3/6 and say "Coleman did not prove his case. Failed burden of proof, presented insufficient evidence, etc." No need to count any more ballots because Coleman didn't give us any reason to.....
The political fallout would be noisy but judges/courts often ignore political noise.
E) Is the ECC is divided? A 2-1 majority is all that is needed to decide the case but they have been unanimous so far and a 3-0 decision strengthens their decision against reversal on appeal. But what if they can't agree? What if one of them really wants to, say, throw out the Minneapolis 133 and the other 2 want them kept in?
Here the reason for the delay might be simple/complex debate and negotiation. I still think they want to be unanimous on all points if it is at all possible (not the least of which is that if , say, the MN Supreme Court would reverse their ruling on some points the case would be sent BACK to the ECC for further trial--- and I think Hayden, Reilly and Marben do NOT want that. They're as tired of this as we are...)
Fine writing by Jay:
http://www.minnpost.com/...
Franken Sighting
The Senator-elect has kept a low profile for virtually all of the Recount, just an odd appearance here and there, no real press conferences. But last night he did attend a Young Democrats (DFL as the party is known in MN) deal and said:
"We will be seated," Al Franken told a gathering of young Democrats in Minnesota today. "And by ‘we,’ I mean me."
Nice short little catch by Minn Independent here:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
WineRev Diary Project
A couple Sundays back (v. 95) many people joined in to offer thoughts and ideas for collecting these diaries into something larger and more permanent (My idea of printing them out on 8 1/2 by 14 paper has had little support.)
Four Kossacks, by coincidence all women, have volunteered to be development editors to lash these lunatic ravings into something resembling a book.... and perhaps a website.... and perhaps an e-book. (Screenplay is farther down the agenda. I wonder what Abraham, Zucker & Zucker are up to these days......).
We have had several folks volunteer to do copy and line editing and we'll be contacting you later in April.
But this team of Amazons (I feel like a Greek captive) has asked me to ask you for other volunteers. We will need fact-checkers to see if, say, the citations of the Bhagavad-Gita are correct or if they are actually from Inna-Gadda-da-Veeda (very close, but we must be correct...)
While we will need to ask your input SOON on title* ideas we are also looking for a graphic artist who could design a cover. An illustrator/ cartoonist could perhaps provide funny drawings/ cartoons based in the 3 light moments that have occurred so far in these diaries.
If we are going to use photographs (can Ben Ginsberg actually BE photographed? Or does he have that same problem with cameras as with mirrors like other vampires do?) it would help is someone could run down permissions and releases from various sources.
It looks like we have a publisher; one of the "Amazons" is one. If it all goes well we would LOVE to be able to premiere the book at the Pittsburgh NetRoots Nation in mid-August. To meet that rather imposing deadline we will be setting a price and start soon to accept pre-orders. Those pre-paid orders will give us the seed money for the initial print run. (OR, if someone has a few grand sitting around they want to loan to a good cause we can be persuaded....)
*Just a couple further thoughts on a title. Subject to the wisdom of the community, the Amazons and anybody who wants to send a pushy e-mail, I think a Main Title:Sub-Title formula might work best. More than Coleman and Franken I like to think these diaries have been more a blogger's view of democracy in action. What moves me more than another discussion of Section 209 of the MN code are those moments when, say, ImpeccableLiberalCredentials drove into Bemidji and sat 7 feet from the table where townsfolk were carefully recounting each ballot and holding them up for possible challenge by a representative from either side. Or when Pawlenty repeated that ridiculous "ballots in the trunk story" and Sec. of State Ritchie not only denied it emphatically, he said to the press, "I've given the governor my cell phone number so he can call me anytime with any further questions..." Moments like that meant much more to me than the latest legal stumble by Tony Trimble.
So something like Main Title: "A strange internet tale of democracy in Minnesota" or "The Blogging of a Senator: Sub Title.."
Be thinking about this. Write them down and put them on a post-it note by your monitor. We'll ask for suggestions in 1 round, then narrow the list to a top several and ask you to pick among them. (We might even offer a prize for the winner so sharpen up the brain cells.)
Thank you all and every for being interested.
Thats all we got right now from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.