Free Republic

Minnesota State Canvassing Board review of challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate race HERE

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) The Minnesota Supreme Court is getting involved in the state's unsettled U.S. Senate race. The court said Monday it will weigh whether to stop the sorting and counting of wrongly rejected absentee ballots until clear instructions are handed down. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman petitioned the court to step in after the state board overseeing the recount recommended those ballots be considered last week. Coleman maintains there aren't clear guidelines for the recommendation and could lead to disarray among the 87 counties.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Democrat Al Franken got good news Friday in his bid for the Senate, winning favorable rulings from a state elections board on rejected absentee ballots and the tally in one of his strongholds. The Canvassing Board overseeing the race recount recommended that county election boards sort and count wrongly rejected absentee ballots. The five-member panel also urged that a recount in one University of Minnesota area precinct be based on Election Night tapes from a ballot counting machine. The recount there, where results favor Franken, ended with 133 missing ballots that could be counted if...

The recount has swung back and forth between the two men, with batches of uncounted ballots being discovered here and there as well as clerical errors changing the totals. With the recount virtually complete on Friday, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said Coleman led Franken by 787 votes. Local newspapers put Coleman's margin at about 200 votes, tallying ballots that had previously been challenged.

With all but one precinct re-counted in the Minnesota Senate race, Franken campaign attorney Marc Elias is claiming Franken leads Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) by four votes. The number from Franken's internal tally does not include the Minneapolis precinct where 133 ballots went missing. The Franken count includes the thousands of disputed ballots that both campaigns objected to during the recount process.

The U.S. Senate recount neared its final hours Thursday, buffeted by the kinds of disputes over missing ballots and challenged ballots that have become familiar in the month since the post-election drama began. Yet at day's end, with 99 percent of the ballots counted, the gap separating Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken was only 36 votes larger than it had been at the start. Coleman now leads by 251, according to Star Tribune tabulations. As on Wednesday, the case of 133 missing ballots in Minneapolis held center stage. The city's top election official said she did not...

Al Franken’s campaign claims it now holds a 22-vote lead in the U.S. Senate race with just 138,000 votes left to be recounted. This figure contrasts with other tabulations, based on numbers from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office, that show Coleman maintaining a 303-vote lead. The Franken numbers differ in a couple of respects from the SOS data. Most importantly the Democratic camp’s vote tally relies on the call made by local election officials in determining which candidate an individual intended to support. By contrast the other tallies don’t take into consideration the roughly 6,000 ballots that have been...

Take it to the bank.

The polls close in ten minutes. Hopefully Georgia has held the line today. Poll traffic was reported as steady here Northeast Atlanta today...

Today’s Senate runoff between Jim Martin and Saxby Chambliss has drawn national attention in large part because of the possibility that a Martin victory would give Democrats 60 seats in the Senate, enough to close off filibusters. However, Sen. Jim Martin would become that 60th vote only if Sen. Al Franken became the 59th. And that seems highly unlikely. Franken has fallen behind by more than 300 votes in the Minnesota Senate recount (although the Franken camp claims the real margin is less than 80), with less than 10 percent of the votes still to be recounted. According to The...

Former U.S. representative and current Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R) said he will “seriously consider” running to replace Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) in 2010. “At this point, my plan is — at the appropriate time — to announce my intention to seek reelection as Florida’s attorney general,” McCollum said in a statement Tuesday following an announcement from Martinez that he would not seek a second term. “However, given today’s development, I will seriously consider and discuss with my family a race for this U.S. Senate seat, and we will share our decision at a later date.” McCollum said he...

The hand recount of Minnesota Senate ballots is in its final week, but the results are likely to be inconclusive. The declaration of a winner will be on hold until thousands of disputed ballots are sorted out. By Friday, all of the state's 87 counties should be done with their collective review of 2.9 million ballots. A five-member board will gather beginning Dec. 16 to rule on ballot challenges made by Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken. As of Monday night, Coleman was up 344 votes when Nov. 4 and recounted numbers from precincts are put side...

Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken's campaign says it may appeal to the U.S. Senate or the courts because it believes that up to 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified in the state's recount of votes, The Hill reports. "Wherever the numbers stand todayÂ…that number simply cannot be relevant if it does not include all the votes that were legally cast," Franken attorney Marc Elias said, according to the newspaper. "No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted." Franken trails Republican rival Norm Coleman by 282 votes with most of the...

Al Franken’s (D) campaign may ask the Democratic-led Senate to intervene on his behalf to allow some disqualified absentee ballots to be counted in his quest to unseat Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Franken attorney Marc Elias made the case to reporters Monday that as many as 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified and that the Senate or the courts may need to step in to resolve the issue. “No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted,” Elias said of the recount that became necessary when only about 200 votes separated...

Clicking on the link and then registering for the website will allow you to view and vote for yourself on ballots which have been challenged by either campaign.

The recount is around 88% complete with Coleman ahead in the official tally by 282 votes. At the same time, there are 5,623 ballots which have been challenged by one or the other campaign, and these ballots are removed - temporarily - from the official tally. Therefore the 282 vote lead is not very meaningful; what matters is the dispensation of the challenged ballots. For example, if these challenged ballots break 52.6% to 47.4% in favor of Franken, he wins. Note also that the vast majority of challenged ballots will go against the candidate making the challenge. That's because most...

The setback at the Canvassing Board has forced Al Franken to face the fact that he didn’t get enough valid votes to beat Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate Race. With the rejection of his bid to get the panel to add in thousands of rejected absentee ballots, there seems little chance that the remaining 15% of ballots left in the recount will produce the kind of change that 85% has not. What’s a surly, self-absorbed DFL candidate to do?Sue: Minnesota’s U.S. Senate showdown is veering down a path toward the courts and possibly the Senate itself after a panel’s ruling...

ST. PAUL - Hours after the Franken campaign failed to convince the Minnesota State Canvassing Board to intervene on its behalf, Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nev) supported Franken's attorney's statement that they are prepared to take the Minnesota election to the U.S. Senate for a decision. According to comments published by Talking Points Memo, Franken's lead recount attorney, Marc Elias, said: "There are a number of ways this can happen, whether it is at the county level, before the state canvassing board, before the courts of Minnesota, or before the United States Senate, we do not know," said Elias --...

The Coleman campaign has just issued the following press release that confirms the nightmare scenarios sketched out by John Fund in his Wall Street Journal column today: ST. PAUL - Hours after the Franken campaign failed to convince the Minnesota State Canvassing Board to intervene on its behalf, Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nev) supported Franken's attorney's statement that they are prepared to take the Minnesota election to the U.S. Senate for a decision. Later Wednesday afternoon, Reid opened the door for Senate intervention into the Minnesota election processing, saying: "Today's decision by the Minnesota Canvassing Board not to count certain...

A loyal family friend was appointed to Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s vacant Senate seat Monday as an apparent placeholder until Beau Biden can inherit it upon his return from active duty in Iraq. In one of her final acts in office, Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) selected Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser and former chief of staff to the elder Biden, to be the state’s next senator. Biden (D) won election as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate but was simultaneously reelected to the Senate on Nov. 4. As he cannot take both jobs, there has been intense speculation...