Comments on: Franken-Coleman Recount, 11/24/08: Exponential Challenges and Ballot Craziness

By: Sara

Sara — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:07:19 +0000

Minnesota Law does not permit any sort of re-do of the election. Forget it.

I suspect both the missing ballots and the addition of ballots will be accounted for by the County level Judges. If there is too much deviation between the original machine count as compared with the count of the sign in book, they will probably recount the precinct ballots. After the ballots were hand sorted and counted in the recount phase, the Franken/Coleman/Other ballots were packaged seperately, thus available for an independent re-count to establish whether all ballots are accounted for. This would not only catch someone counting out 26 ballots for a 25 vote pack for Franken, if it showed up as a pattern in several precincts, it would not favor Coleman in the PR world. (The rules require that all packs of 25 be counted independently by both the R and DFL Judge — so it will be interesting to see if they followed the rules to the letter.)

What will be interesting is tomorrow’s State Canvas Board Hearing on the excluded absentee ballots. The Franken Campaign, which went to court to get access to information about this catagory, said today that 66 of 87 counties had provided them with all files on the matter, we’ll see if the Canvas Board orders the other 21 to produce them. (they should).

I think the argument about these will be around the principle of equal protection. Some county clerks may have allowed very similar absentee ballots to go to the precinct, be opened and counted on election day, but other county clerks may have excluded on the same grounds. Say Sue Ellen Smith is your voter, but she signs her ballot envelope, Sue E. Smith. One county may have allowed, another disallowed. That ain’t equal protection, and if some are already counted, the argument will be that all others with a like disqualification need to be counted. We’ll see what the Canvas Board does with arguments like that — remembering that Minnesota Law favors counting every possible vote.

By: shell

shell — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:14:14 +0000

What I find interesting is that, at least the ones I saw — was that the Coleman “questioned ballots” were pretty lame. As in “This guy voted for McCain … and Franken! That is suspicious!” No wrong marks, nothing — just the people the voter voted for.

And this sets up the end game. If Franken wins, Coleman can then say, “The Board said MY questioned ballots were all in Al’s favor! That is a fraud! Unfair!” That’s the 2008 GOP for you. And he WILL do this, if Franken wins. I’m just waiting for it.

By: Phoenix Woman

Phoenix Woman — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:36:20 +0000

That’s why Coleman started challenging tons of ballots right out of the gate. Franken was forced to do the same simply to keep Coleman from getting away with creating the false impression that he was really “gaining” in the recount when all he was doing was taking Franken ballots off the table temporarily.

By: LKN2

LKN2 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:13:46 +0000

In some fo the precincts workers separate ballots into stacks of 25 for each candidate, and then the ballots are totaled. Apparently, in one precinct a worker was caught stacking 26 ballots in each stack of Franken ballots. These would later be counted as only 25 votes! Dirty tricks like these might explain some of the missing ballots

By: gordonsowner

gordonsowner — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:11:11 +0000

Someone I know wrote a map that tracks the recount and licensed it to WCCO. You can zoom in and click on a precinct to see the individual stats on the recount for that precinct. You can see it here:

http://elections.cbslocal.com/.....ce88.shtml

By: californiarealitycheck

californiarealitycheck — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:41:47 +0000

you don’t like ss as a retirement plan fer us?

By: selise

selise — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:40:04 +0000

thanks i’m listening to it now (cspan archives). don’t hearing any detail in this one either. hope i heard wrong, but i think i heard him say something about the need to save social security. really really hope i heard that wrong.

By: Elliott

Elliott — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:39:53 +0000

Citibank Never Figured That Housing Prices Would Drop
Jane’s up at the mothership

By: californiarealitycheck

californiarealitycheck — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:37:04 +0000

one thing that gave me tingles was an error admission from bama. small thing but he said “we” will admit mistakes. period!

By: LS

LS — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:35:44 +0000

I don’t know, but it is getting so convoluted that no one will trust the outcome in any case on either side.