First, I want to apologize: When I last posted, I thought that nearly all the challenged ballots had been counted. What I didn’t realize then was that while all the 1400-odd actively-challenged ballots were just about counted, those ballots where the challenges had been withdrawn — which runs to about four times that number — had not been counted. They’re going to be counted starting Tuesday. Mea dopa!
Secondly, I want to say: Looks like Nate Silver pegged this one pretty close when he projected a few weeks ago that Franken would win by 27 votes. As Nate says now, the fact that Franken’s team is currently projecting a 35-to-50-vote win margin, a margin considerably less than the one the StarTribune is using, means that they are pretty confident that they have this in the bag once the dust settles. Also as Nate says, the fact that the Coleman team really isn’t attempting to attack the specifics of the Franken campaign’s claimed win shows that they know full well that Franken is right. It also, in my opinion, shows that they know that their last Hail-Mary-pass attempt at legal action to get alleged "duplicate votes" disqualified is going to get shot down by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
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Thanks PW.
OT, interested in any opinions you have about Alan Page as state SC justice.
He’s generally a pretty good guy. The general consensus is that he started out mediocre but grew in the job.
If I was Franken, I wouldn’t get in any small airplanes….
I am sooo looking forward to Senator Franken.
Let’s see; we’ve been electing Senators for 75 years (surprising, yes) and still haven’t figured how to count ballots. Pretty impressive republic.
We’ve been electing presidents even longer and have sucked at that from the election of 1800, why the surprise?
Minnesota appears to know how to count ballots OK- and they don’t even fight violently while doing it- It’s VELOCITY that they seem to not have down yet. The “board” decided to take another day off while someone else accounted for some ballots- they’ll get back to work tomorrow- they seem to love finding things that they can put off till tomorrow. Something about the weather? Maybe they LIKE the social life and don’t want it to end soon.
It’s good to have one Supreme Court Justice who can bench press the rest of the bench.
I’ve been tracking this on the internet. Here’s what I’ve found:
Stolen election! Stolen election! Stuart Smalley, ha ha ha! Franken wasn’t funny on SNL! Franken asked for the recount because he was a sore loser! Ballots found in the trunk of a car! Somalis!!!!!!!! People voting twice with “duplicate ballots”! ACORN! Franken wants to count invalid absentee ballots! Minnesota sucks! Worse than Chicago! Communists!
On the one hand, they’re desperate, and that’s good. On the other, they’re idiots, and sometimes sort of scary.
It’s AMAZING how many people Minnesota just elected Stuart Smalley. It’s AMAZING how many people feel completely comfortable talking about fraud without any factual basis whatsoever. I stayed on several threads all day just asking: what evidence of fraud do you have? Many were annoyed, one called me a troll, but some didn’t seem to understand what the relevance of my question was. They were just baffled by the concepts of “evidence” or “facts”.
My mind’s made up! How DARE you confuse me with facts! /s
Sounds about right for the wingnuts. It’s all a matter of faith, dontcha know.
When the margin is 0.007%, counting the votes is going to be tricky. Most coin flip trials with 2.9 million flips will show a bigger gap than that.
Contrary to all the lame scuttlebutt, this election has gone along routinely and almost on schedule, with no serious problems. This isn’t an entertainment event arranged for the viewer’s pleasure, and there’s no real urgency. (The republic can survive with 99 Senators). The bogus urgency in Florida 2000 was a big part of the reason why that was such a horrible mess.
Heh. Palmieri’s big foot on ThinkProgress underscores ThinkProgress’s editorial independence, according to ThinkProgress.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/…..ependence/
Here’s Teddy’s post on the subject from earlier today.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/12…..-yglesias/
A coin flip trial? These are votes…not tests to see if a coin is “true”. That said, trying to infer the voter intent of many of those ballots is an exercise that defies the skill of anyone. There are many very difficult decisions even when the canvassers are trying to be utterly fair to the voter. I’d say that both candidates and parties can point to this race and say…”if you really want your vote counted…don’t treat the ballot as a joke.” As well people need to be educated that if they make an error on their ballot they need to obtain a new one.
I’m not much a fan of a run-off, though. Generally it brings out a different set of folks than voted in the original election, though it would give “voice” to those who may have voted for the 3rd Party candidate.
I was pointing out how close the election was, cinnamonape.
There really weren’t that many bad ballots (1000 or less out of 2.9 million). People keep forgetting that it was a freakishly close election and for that reason, everything is important.
1,864 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Phoenix Woman and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Thanks for the post Sister PW but from my igloo over here in western Wisconsin I find I’ve missed a bunch the last couple a weeks…what happened to the wrongly rejected absentee ballots, isn’t the prospect that the Supreme Court is gunna hafta make a detremination on those too and it looks ta me like the Supremes ain’t enthusiastic about takin any of their holiday time with the task…might they jest be cranky enough about it to to sumpthin stupid?
And as long as I gotcha here, when is the Minnesota DFL gunna come to its senses and make a frontal assault on the Independence Party and tatoo those bastards to Coleman and Pawlenty? As long as the Independence Party survives, the Republican Party of Minnesota will not be able to take its rightful place with the No-nothing Party and the Whigs.
MERRY FUCKIN’ xMAS AND…
KEEP THE FAITH AND DON’T LET THOSE BASTARDS INTO YER YARD!!!
Excellent news, PW!
With luck, you Minnesotans will be getting a new Senator, just like we Alaskans did when we showed Uncle Ted the door.
(thanks for the Christmas card, by the way!)
Dear Norske:
The Supremes are if anything mightily ticked at Norm Coleman for wasting their time. Plus, one of them is Alan Page (yes, that Alan Page) and he is a good egg.
Never fret, Norske! Now go dish yourself up some rommegrot!
Dear LetterMan:
It is, indeed! And you’re welcome!
It looks like things are going to get nasty now. Coleman is talking to one of Bush’s Florida 2000 experts (a guy involved with the Swiftboaters too).
Cross-posted at TPM
This was an election about which I felt really disappointed on election nt. I was very excited about having Al in the senate, a very funny but articulate true progressive. And when have we ever had one of those. I’ve been so heartened by the discussion and projections of the recount (thanks Nate), but again the actual process at first seemed to be going in the wrong direction. Finally Al is ahead and apparently is going to win.
Now it seems even more important to have Al in the senate, what with all the MSM, blue dogs, Bayh and his idiot followers and their “center right nation” bull crap. Also given the rather less than progressive cabinet and things like the Warren fiasco, it should be fabulous fun having Al speaking out on the tube if the MSM actually puts him on. (Not that I’m that upset by Obama’s picks for his cabinet in general) I do believe Al will be invited on the squawk shows as a DEM spokesman even if he does upset the “Village” because he’s just too damned entertaining to keep him off.
“Because he’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it people like him!”
A lot of the “stolen election” talk traces back to John Lott. Lott has been famously wrong before, and he’s wrong about Coleman-Franken.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/c…..7/franken/
http://www.minnpost.com/braubl…..rong_again
http://www.minnpost.com/braubl…..t_misleads