Gooooooooddd MMMmmmmmmmoooorning DailyKOS!
Here in Minnesota has been 24 hours of recounting the governor's race between Mark Dayton (D) and Tom Emmer (R). The difference is 8770 votes in Dayton's favor but that is below the 0.5% margin of difference out of 2.1 million votes so we are RE-counting them.
First reports are in from Lake of the Woods to New Caledonia and there are (sadly) no new Lizard People ballots to report. But these things I can tell you below the fold...
CROSS POSTED AT Minnesota Progressive Project
THE GOOD
Once again, just like 2 years ago, they came. Church secretaries. Bank workers. Short order cooks. Long form CPAs. Moms. Grandfathers. Grain elevator scale workers. Law students. Snowmobile mechanics. Broadband engineers.
They are the ordinary and gifted, your neighbors and strangers. Bushy haired with accented English (A mellifluous phrase with roots two days walk from Mogadishu? Does that staccato that sounds vaguely like wood slats clapping start life somewhere north of Lagos?) Some are sixth-generation with scraggly white hair and short a few of their own teeth...and also slightly accented English (The singsong lilt of Kiruna? Or Trondheim? Someone's rough-sawn pronunciation on certain words that once had a home in Tampere or Karelia?) These and more are the common folk of Minnesota, determined once more to Recount an election (or 4, if you count 3 legislative ones as well). Why? Why do they come through rain and fog and chill, come to sit on hard chairs and stare at oval dots until they twirl like snowflakes and swim like spawning walleye?
They come, the poll workers and election judges, the plain and the talented, the snide and the sincere, because they still believe the old promise, the old hope, that in this place the People decide who they will DEMOTE for the next few years to become the People's servants. Because the people decide, not aristocrats, not corporations (although they are working on it), not the bully-strong, not the self-appointed, not the blue-blooded. And since the People speak through their votes and the totals are close, well, as the Norway pine points its finger to the sky in a resinous fragrance of needles hard green against white ground, so these thousands (over 30,000 last time) came again to give a pine tree straight, hard, needle-picky precise, careful count so the Peoples' voice will be heard aright and an aroma of legitimacy will settle upon the winner. To all of them I doff (DOFF!) my hat and say, "Thanks. Takk. Aitah. Danke. Merci...."
After the first day of Recounting the St. Paul Pioneer Press is reporting that statewide about 44% of all votes have been recounted. Over 50 of the 87 counties have already finished. For a lot of folks it was like a reunion from 2008. The Worthington Daily Globe noted:
In Hubbard County (N central, above the line of Duluth), for instance, workers greeted each other and auditor’s staff as old friends.
Many assumed the seats in Park Rapids they had taken in 2008, with one telling photographers, "Just use a photo from last time."
The news is good from many places. For instance Wilkin County (western border of MN, just N of where MN meets both Dakotas; Breckenridge) fired off Monday morning at 9:00am and was DONE RECOUNTING by 10:15am. The whole thing. Every ballot. And....not 1 ballot changed, not one total. All 2458 ballots in the county finished EXACTLY where county auditor Brenda Conzemius and her crew put them the first time 20 days ago. (Now THAT name is rarely heard on the streets of Oslo, let me tell you!)
Wilkin County's Recount was so smooth, and as fast as a runaway snowmobile on dragster nitro for fuel, it embarassed Wadena, Watonwan, Cook, Hubbard, Mahnomen, Rock, Red Lake and Lincoln counties. They all dug in and finished THEIR recounts too by 1:00pm. MN county map here:MN Counties
The Pioneer Press added other counties that FINISHED yesterday:
Small counties such as Big Stone, Lake of the Woods, Kittson, Sibley, Martin and Brown finished early, followed by larger ones such as Olmsted, Beltrami and Winona counties.
Security was tight, but balanced by the public's right to attend for themselves. (Worthington Daily Globe)
Douglas County officials in Alexandria made sure the ballots were secure.
When workers took a break from the recount from noon to 1 p.m., one election official and a deputy sheriff deputy stayed in the room.
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Everyone was out in good force and strong numbers, although the Emmer people just can't seem to find friends to cover some of the smaller places like Wilkin County or Lincoln County (SW corner, bordering on S. Dakota; Ivanhoe--really, thats the county seat!) as you can see in this snip from the Daily Globe:
Dayton sent nearly 2,000 people to recounting sites; Emmer fielded 600. About 100 volunteers and staff members manned the Dayton state headquarters, while a dozen were in the Republican Party offices working for Emmer.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune amplified this:
In counting sites across Minnesota Monday, partisan volunteers are watching each ballot -- and lawyers are watching the watchers.
Denise Cardinal, a spokeswoman for DFLer Mark Dayton, said the campaign had 1,923 volunteers working Monday, the first day of counting, and had attorneys available for each of the state's 85 counting sites.
She said she didn't know how many law school graduates were standing at the ready but said if they were in one law firm it would be, "the largest law firm in the state of Minnesota."
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HERE is the system working like its supposed to work, although with a bit more friction than needed. And by the way, one of the GOP memes they are trying to plant is "more votes than voters" to try to undermine the legitimacy of the election system. Its all crapola of course. Yes, you can have more votes than voters AND for legitimate, explainable, non-criminal, non-ACORN reasons (as noted in v. 13.0 of this series. Just scroll down to excess votes/excess hot air for 3 examples.Dairy 13)
Here's what happened in Dakota County yesterday, just south of the Twin Cities (lots of suburbia).
Shortly after noon, the Emmer campaign raised a concern over a potentially missing ballot in Inver Grove Heights Precinct 8. Joel Beckman, director of property taxation and records for the county, told Emmer's observers to take their concerns to the canvassing board after he refused to recount the entire precinct.
Having been through the trying 2008 Coleman-Franken recount, he said continually recounting entire precincts creates an endless process.
Some observers clearly were frustrated.
"There's a missing ballot, and we can't spend 15 seconds looking for a missing ballot?" Emmer campaign worker Derrick Lehrke complained aloud to no one in particular.
Later, recount workers found an Election Night note that an absentee ballot had been run through a vote-counting machine twice.
And that settled THAT!
As might be expected here and there challenges were being made but a lot of them seemed to be genuine. Here is a sample from St. Paul (Ramsey County).
At the lunch hour, only five challenges had been filed in Ramsey County after about 20,000 ballots had been recounted. Four of those five came from the Emmer camp, Mansky said, and none of them were frivolous.
At one point, Mansky and Emmer campaign attorney Michael Toner closely studied a ballot with a small black dot being the only indication that the voter intended to cast the ballot for Dayton.
"How have you handled that in the past?" Toner asked. "We've counted them as votes," replied Mansky. "I'd like to keep that on the challenged (pile)," said Toner.
Mansky is Joe Mansky, elections director (and former STATE elections director. He's been doing this for nearly 30 years.) Fans will recognize the name. 2 years ago a Coleman challenger got apoplectic in Joe's face, screaming. Joe didn't even bat an eyelash and didn't back down 1 atomic diameter. Challenge was denied.
Michael Toner is THE hired gun (from DC) for the Emmer campaign and has kept a very low profile until now. But on this one, you know, this is JUST how a Recount, a challenge, and a head-scratcher should be handled. Well done, Mr. Mansky. Well done, Mr. Toner.
THE BAD
Are challenges allowed? Yes. Is one side or the other racking up a lot more challenges than the other, in order to lower the other side's vote totals (at least for the moment)? Yes.
The excellent Jay Weiner at Minn Post explains:
For instance: assume there are 10 votes counted. The election judge at the table rules 7 for Dayton, 3 for Emmer. But Emmer's team challenges four of those decisions for voter intent reasons based on marks on the ballot. It wants the State Canvassing Board to rule on these challenges later.
The vote is thus reported on the [Secretary of State's] site as Dayton 3, Emmer 3, four challenges. But we know from 2008 that the Canvassing Board backs up the "call at the table" on almost every occasion.
The numbers are small but the one-sidedness is showing: (Dakota County, just south of Twin Cities, suburban)
In Dakota County, so far, recounts in most precincts have drawn few if any challenges. It appeared that most of the questions are coming from Emmer’s recount team.
In Washington county, 11 challenges were made by noon, all by the Emmer campaign. Another four, all by the Emmer campaign, were considered frivolous, said Kevin Corbid, elections director for the county.
THE RENVILLE RUNAROUND
Now HERE things went SERIOUSLY wrong...and then Jay Weiner fixed part of it...and Don Davis in Worthington provided the final clue.
Renville County (W and a bit S of Minneapolis, about 2/3 of the way across the state; Olivia) is an example if you DON'T let local officials have any authority, power or discretion (as the Emmer side argued on Tuesday to the Canvassing Board) then somewhere among 2.1 million votes in 87 counties THIS crapola is going to happen (Pioneer Press):
At least one small county saw things derail: Larry Jacobs, auditor/treasurer in western Minnesota's Renville County, said his staff had no trouble identifying frivolous challenges — Emmer lodged 423 challenges, and 422 were frivolous, representing nearly 20 percent of Dayton's votes in the county.
Jacobs said the lead observer for Emmer's team told him she'd been instructed to challenge any ballot with writing on it — even a ballot with a write-in in another race.
"We had one bona fide challenge," Jacobs said. "I think it was pretty easy for me to determine, but that's not my place."
OOPS! And there, just when I was ready to label the news from Renville county really stupid, Jay Weiner from the Minn Post reports (in a journalistic, corrective way)
Monday night it was learned the challenges had to do with write in votes for a local school board race there (in Renville County), and not the governor’s contest.
Thanks, Jay!
But still, why all the challenges? Don Davis at the Worthington Daily Globe noted:
Jacobs said a representative for Emmer’s office apologized for the large number of challenges, but said he had been instructed to challenge any ballots with writing on them. State Republican Chairman Tony Sutton could not explain why there were so many Renville challenges, by far the most in the state.
And there it is:
"challenge any ballots with writing on them."
The Emmer challenger in Renville county saw lots of ballots with WRITE-IN names for the school board race and dutifully yet idiotically followed instructions from Sutton the Hutt. "Challenge ANY ballot with writing on them....."
I'm back to SHEEEEESHHHHH!
THE WEIRD
1) Why are there more Emmer challenges than Dayton challenges?
"Our people are just being vigilant," Emmer lawyer Tony Trimble said. "Better eyesight."
2) And just what IS a "frivolous challenge"? According to Trimble:
"Our challengers did a very good job of inspecting" the ballots, Trimble said. "Frivolous is in the eye of the beholder."
3) Even here in Minnesota zealotry and just plain stupid can indeed be found. How about this from the Pioneer Press in Hennepin County (Minneapolis)?
In Hennepin County, one Emmer volunteer challenged a clear overvote, with ovals for two gubernatorial candidates filled in; the volunteer said it should be an Emmer vote. In another, an Emmer volunteer challenged a Dayton ballot with what looked to be a stray pencil mark near a name in a different race, saying the vote should be tossed.
4) Creativity lives! Its not the Lizard People or FSM, but how about these from Ramsey County (St. Paul)?
One challenged ballot included a write-in vote for "Who farted?" Another contained a vote for "Santa."
5) Washington County is just east of St. Paul (exurban sprawl). According to the Star Tribune:
In Washington County, an Emmer representative challenged a ballot that appeared blank for the governor's office, saying that should be counted as an Emmer vote.
A local recount official declared that challenge "frivolous."
A Star Trib blogger snarked the situation thusly:
Additionally, any ballots left entirely blank in boxes should also count as Emmer votes. Further, any found fast-food burger wrappers should be tabulated as an Emmer vote. Finally, any voter who has a T or an E in his or her name in the voting roll should count as an Emmer vote.
I will RANT the situation thusly:
A BLANK ballot? Really? A BLANK, not a mark here there or anywhere, untouched by ink even in imagination, un-ovaled, un-filled, a BLANK ballot should be counted????
And counted for Emmer???
Yeah, right. Frivolous challenge indeed! This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder should a signature test for challengers be required---you know, whether thay can actually WRITE their own signature...in cursive....no spelling errors allowed. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to hop in the car and drive over to Washington County and invite that "challenger" to "step outside" (in the old-style 2 guys in a bar sort of tone) so I can feed him a knuckle sandwich of frivolous!....SHEESH!!!
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A ROUND UP
The always good writing Jay Weiner at Minn Post channels his inner David Letterman (I think Jay has better teeth) and comes out with a Top 10 list of Recount Concerns. #3, 4 and 7 alone are worth the price of admission, but read it all here:
http://www.minnpost.com/...
Very good first day round up by the Pioneer Press here:
http://www.twincities.com/...
Do YOU want to look at what is/is not a frivolous challenge? The Dayton campaign razzed the Emmer side by releasing several Emmer challenges against Dayton with appropriate derision. The People's favorite media source the UPTAKE (yay for citizen journalists!) has 12 of them posted here:
Uptaking the Frivolous
If in the welter (or bantam, or fly, or middle?) of all this you detect a ring of calm focus from the Dayton side that reminds you of the Franken squad 2 years ago, you would be right. Thats because a bunch of them are back to help out Mark Dayton...including the number crunchers. Last time, as the Senate Recount got under way the Franken team eerily predicted at certain points they would take the lead by 4...and they did. Then, a couple weeks later, that they would lead by 45-50, and it came in at 49. (Then came the 5th pile ballots that took Al's lead to +225.)
Jay Weiner got to peek behind the curtain:
Rows of tables with rows of laptops were being stared at by rows of lawyers and operatives. Among the lawyerati monitoring the day’s doings included members of the Al Franken legal team, such as....Kevin Hamilton.....Charlie Nauen (and) his partner – another Franken veteran – Bill Gengler. Franken’s recount operations chief Alana Peterson...... data king Andy Bechhoefer....who analyzed all the data in the 2008 recount that Franken won even before the absentee ballots were included. He’s good.
Jay's whole rundown on the first day here:
http://www.minnpost.com/...
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WHEW! I'm pooped! But thats one day done and the rest of the week to come. Its all the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.