Posted on 11/10/2008 11:04:14 PM PST by tomymind
After local county elections officials verified 2.9 million votes in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over DFL challenger Al Franken shrank to a whisper, the difference settling Monday at a mere 206 votes.
Elections officials in Minnesota's 87 counties had until Monday to finalize their results, which will now be forwarded to the state for approval. After that, one of the most closely watched recounts in state history will get under way, even as maneuvering over the recount — and the rhetoric surrounding it — continues to escalate.
The Coleman campaign on Monday accused Franken of trying to "stuff the ballot box" after a Franken campaign lawyer said he's identified 461 absentee ballots that should have been counted but were rejected for reasons such as mismatched signatures.
"People feel an almost historical obligation to have their votes cast and counted" in this election, said former U.S. Attorney David Lillehaug, who is spearheading the Franken campaign's recount efforts.
"I'm not sure any of us sign our signature exactly the same way every day," he added.
Lillehaug made his request during a highly anticipated meeting of the Hennepin County Canvassing Board, one of the last in the state to finalize its election results. The request was rejected by the board, made up of county officials, court representatives and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.
A lawyer for the Republican Party of Minnesota was taken aback by the move and said it was improper to ask the board to reinstate the votes. "If they want to reopen those, that's a contest. That goes to an election judge," said the lawyer, Matt Haapoja.
Hennepin County's tally was being closely watched because it is the most populous county in the state, and the overall vote totals for Franken and Coleman continued to shift Monday. That should stop now that counties have verified their results. The recount is scheduled to begin Nov. 19.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the changes aren't unusual. "What's important is how few changes there are compared to previous elections," he said.
Many counties only changed one or two votes. Chisago and Rice counties reported no changes at all.
Joel Beckman, Property Taxes and Records director for Dakota County, said the county made about 17 adjustments to its vote tallies since Election Day, principally because of absentee ballots being delivered to the wrong precinct and having to be counted after the election.
"This is not unusual," he said.
Others saw much larger changes — the Iron Range city of Mountain Iron, population 3,000, saw a swing of 100 votes in Franken's direction last week. Election officials said the wrong number was recorded when someone misread the result, but Republicans questioned the swing.
Since Coleman declared himself the winner at Wednesday's news conference with a 725-vote lead, Franken has sliced more than 500 votes off that margin. He picked up 54 votes since that time in Hennepin County, while Coleman picked up 27, for a net gain for Franken of 27 votes.
That's a fraction of his statewide gain, but Franken bested Coleman in Hennepin County by nearly 100,000 votes, underscoring why the campaign wants those 461 rejected absentee votes counted.
The allegation of ballot-box stuffing was another aggressive move by the Coleman campaign. So far, it has requested Election Night materials from counties across the state, filed a lawsuit attempting to block the counting of 32 absentee votes that weren't delivered to Hennepin County precincts on time and called on the Franken campaign to agree to ballot security measures, which neither campaign has authority over.
At an unrelated news conference, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Monday entered the fray over the recount. He praised the state's history of clean elections, but said he was concerned about what's been happening with ballots in the Senate race.
"Minnesota has a proud tradition of integrity in its election process and its ballot process. ... However, there have been some concerning reports about some strange things happening in the context of this recount. We have somebody driving around with 30 or 40 ballots in their car. How does that happen?" he said.
Hennepin County officials on Monday said the anecdote Pawlenty references isn't entirely accurate. On Election Day, officials attempted to deliver absentee ballots that arrived as part of a late mail delivery to the appropriate precinct. But some precincts had closed by the time they got there, and the ballots were returned to a secure location before being counted according to state law.
Hennepin County Elections Manager Michelle DesJardin said those kinds of ballots account for nearly all the Hennepin County vote increases since Election Day, and not data entry errors as some other counties have reported.
The ballots are being stored at county elections offices and will be counted at up to 120 locations across the state. Some counties are taking ballot security into their own hands.
In Stearns County, the county attorney sought an order that says, among other things, that no one may be alone in the room where ballots are stored. In Chisago County, Auditor Dennis Freed said he's placed the ballots behind a passkey-controlled door and will install security cameras to help in watching over them.
Stearns County Elections Director Dave Walz keeps all election-related material in a secure room. That room has had some extra eyes on it since Tuesday — as at most county ballot sites, Coleman volunteers have been keeping watch outside the secure room just to make sure nothing untoward goes on.
Walz plans to rearrange the approximately 125 boxes of ballots from all over the county into alphabetical order by city so it will be easier to recount the ballots they contain.
Walz has also begun thinking about how many people he'll need to perform the actual recount. His current plan is to have five teams of two people, overseen by Walz and an assistant. He's anticipating the recount will take his folks about six days.
"It is a serious undertaking," he said.
A standard audit of the election is also under way. At Ramsey County elections headquarters Monday, election judges hand-counted ballots from four St. Paul precincts and one Roseville precinct.
While the audit is not technically part of the recount, election judges try to discern voter intent on ballots that couldn't be read by machine and forward those results to the state Canvassing Board for consideration.
All five precincts saw changes in the Senate race, with Franken picking up a single vote.
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MINNESOTA GOP OFFICES
Blaine Field Staff Luke Fischer 11025 Radisson Rd NE Blaine, MN 55449 (763) 780-0861
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Rochester Field Staff Hayley Astrup 2535 Hwy 14 W Rochester, MN 55901 (507) 536-9475 Click Here For Correct Directions
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Long Lake Field Staff Kim Ekmark 2640 W. Industrial Blvd. Long Lake, MN 55356 (952) 476-5896
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Forest Lake Field Staff Pat Berger 255 Highway 97, Unit 6A Forest Lake, MN 55025
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Democrat Counting Rule:
Count until you pull ahead, then stop.
Has there EVER been a Republican that has come out ahead in one of these deals?
Franken...almost winning?...what a world we live in!?
You’ve got to love these so-called, “recounts” that the Commie ‘RATS do. They keep counting until their guy wins. Then they just stop. Amazing. Somebody really needs to go to jail.
weird is not the word that comes to mind
Update: Franken will spend the next three days at the office of his proctologist, vainly searching for additional ballots.
PING!!
Mail gets there at 7:00 pm?
They were promised never to have to go back there if they cheated Franken into office.
Now that they have a firm number, they’ll magically find some cart of uncounted Dem votes somewhere.
Maybe we need a new law that disqualifies “ballots” that have been riding around in someone’s car for a week. Something very strange there.
You know, I sometimes drive around with sports gear in my car for a week, or maybe something I forgot to drop off at the cleaners. That’s a little different. How senile would someone have to be to “forget” a batch of ballots in their car?
The propaganda spin is part of their tactics. “almost winning” vs. “still behind”
I say we employ their own tactics against them. Let’s take over “Yes We Can”
Yes, we can take back our Republic.
Yes, we can put Conservatives in office.
Yes, we can guarantee a fair election.
Yes, we can prevent voter registration fraud.
Yes, we can prevent voter fraud.
Yes, we can stop morons like Franken.
and furthermore...
Yes, we can win in Iraq.
Yes, we can build nuclear power plants.
Yes, we can get rid of the ridiculous Carter-era laws that make nuclear waste disposal unnecessarily complex, costly, and environmentally harmful.
Yes, we can dismantle the welfare state.
Yes, we can protect our borders.
Yes, we can reduce the size of government.
Yes, we can protect our Constitutional rights.
Yes, we can get the corrupt (of both parties) out of office.
Yes, we can cut spending.
... add your own line here!
Have the Dems called in the infamous Chicago-based Daley Family Vote-Manufacturing Company, yet? The company is known for finding votes in the least likely places.
Like in used pizza boxes——votes suddenly materialize under the leftover pepperoni. This might be the year empty Taco Bell burrito wrappers hold missing votes.
If the counters take frequent bathroom breaks——they might come back with damp votes they found stuffed in the toilet tank.
When the counting gets into the late evening, watch those cleaning ladies mopping-up-—they might find votes stuffed behind the voting machines.
Who can forget----the USSC stopped the count in Fla----probably as appalled as the rest of us to see the eternal counting that was not going to stop until the Dems "found" the votes to win.
Franken will win. Bet on it.
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