Why Is Norm Coleman's Lead Slipping?

www.weeklystandard.com ^ | November 6, 2008 | John McCormack

[tomymind]

Markos Moulitsas notes that Norm Coleman's lead over Al Franken has been diminishing:

A reader has been tracking vote results updates from the Minnesota's SoS office:

9:15 AM
Coleman: 1,211,520
Franken: 1,211,077

10:15 AM

Coleman: 1,211,525
Franken: 1,211,088

1:20 PM
Coleman: 1,211,527
Franken: 1,211,190

That means the gap has gone down from 443, to 437, to 337 as provisional and other straggler ballots are counted. It was 477 votes last night.

Coleman's lead is now down to 236 votes, but the gap is not tightening because "provisional and other straggler ballots" remain uncounted. According to the Minnesota Secretary of State's office, the state does not have provisional ballots and all absentee ballots had to arrive on or before Election Day to be counted.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told me in a phone interview this afternoon that the vote totals are fluctuating because county election officials are correcting errors in the unofficial vote totals. "The most common issue is the transposition of numbers," Ritchie said. "Depending on the county and the circumstance, there are occasionally people late at night on election night and 84 becomes a 48, and they might skip a digit."

Ritchie told me that in one county, "there was a 1 left off of a number so there was a hundred vote error"--the correction of which cut into Norm Coleman's unofficial lead. When I asked which county had seen this 100 vote shift toward Franken, Ritchie told me it would be too difficult to look at the screenshots of the website--static pictures of the site captured throughout the day--and determine which county it was.

According to Ritchie, "when the recount begins there will be representatives [of the Franken and Coleman campaigns] there" to monitor the process, but "before the recount begins it is the job of the local county and city election officials to accurately determine the results." Ritchie, a member of Minnesota's Democratic-Farm-Labor party, said that most of those officials are elected and all are officially "nonpartisan."

The Coleman campaign did not return calls this evening inquiring if they were concerned that these vote totals--which have been shifting in Franken's favor--are currently being reevaluated without the oversight of campaign officials. Ritchie said he was confident that votes were shifting because of honest errors. "There isn't much tolerance here for partisan manipulation of elections on any basis whatsoever," he said.

There will be certification hearings on Monday, at which point there will be hard numbers going into the manual statewide recount. The law governing how a voter's intent will be determined during the recount may be found here. A recent statewide recount for a judicial race in Minnesota resulted in only a 7 vote difference from the initial results. In that race, about 100,000 ballots were cast, while nearly 3 million Minnesotans voted in Tuesday's election.

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[autumnraine]

Hey, I didn’t like one of my guys and he was the only one on the ballot. So I just wrote in “Not (insert guy’s name)” and let it be done at that.

[catfish1957]

I sent Cornyn a nasty note after the bailout, yelling that I was going to vote Liberterian. The race tightened a bit, so when came to brass tacks, I just couldn’t do it.

[Heartland Mom]

You’re kidding? Right? Interesting that errors in Coleman’s count have only yielded 5 additional votes for him, whereas the Maniac picked up 200. The GOP had better fight for this. We need to keep the Dims from their filibuster proof Senate. Enough manipulation of the votes for their evil ways.

[scooby321]

Where is Gov. Pawlenty?

[apillar]

Oh I’m sure the democrats will do what they did in, I think it was the Washington state governors race in 2004. Keep having recounts until they “manufacture” enough votes for a win, it took 3 recounts in that case. Then as soon as they get enough to win, they have a judge declare the recount over.

[Thermalseeker]

You see numbers like that for Al Franklin and you just have to wonder; what do we do?

I see numbers like this and wonder "who are these people voting for this idiot?" I mean, really, Jesse Ventura and now Al "the Clown" Franken?

[sergeantdave]

The governor needs to send in the state police, seize all the ballots, place them under guard and then do a public recount.

Oh, wait. We’re talking REPUBLICAN POODLES cowed by purse-carrying leftists. Forget about republicans stopping this Marxist coup; we’ll need to act ourselves.

[Vigilanteman]

2. Amnesty. Cornyn is for illegal alien amnesty.

How? Crrnyn is the stand-up guy who introduced the Cornyn amendment to expose the extremists on the issue. Remember the Cornyn amendment?

Here are the Senators who voted against the Cornyn amendment , which would have established a permanent bar for gang members, terrorists, and other criminals looking to snag a shamnesty visa. Republicans underlined:

John Kyl can be given a pass because he was the designated procedural vote (a technicality which would allow him to reintroduce the amendment in a conference committee version). Norm Coleman is not on that list.

[tomymind]

Thanks, you have answered to my #37.

;-)

[Reagan69]

How near finished are they?

[tomymind]

Until they find enough undisclosed ballots to let the rat win.

[DFG]

Cornyn voted for the “bailout”.

[Robert A Cook PE]

More fraud - one vote at a time. Bookmarked.

Significantly, and as in CA and FL and Seattle, EVERY “error” is in favor of the democrats.

And the media waits until there are enough errors - and applauds the result.

[Peter Horry]

I blame those Norwegian bachelor farmers, why are there so many of them, they don’t reproduce (well at least not that we know of).

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

The bottom line is, one more Deomcrat to over throw the Senate.

[Marauder]

Pregnant chads?

[andy58-in-nh]

Damn, since when have the dems been so dirty?

Since the days of Tammany Hall in New York, Honey Fitz in Boston, and Al Capone in Chicago. Since the first state hack stuck his sweaty palm out expecting unofficial remuneration for a favor, with a nod and a wink. Since the dearly departed rose from their eternal slumbers in the cemeteries of Oak Lawn to cast their ballots for JFK.

[deport]

If something (God forgive! I in no way would wish anything to happen to that good man) should happen to Obama before the Oath of Office was taken...

---

Standard results or at least for the past few General Elections. Not a lot of difference in total votes, maybe 200,000 or so but it seems the Presidential race leads and others come in somewhere behind. Same applies to Governors races where others including Senators come in behind in total votes. Not sure why that is but it does happen.

[Wuli]

“Ritchie told me that in one county, “there was a 1 left off of a number so there was a hundred vote error”—the correction of which cut into Norm Coleman’s unofficial lead. When I asked which county had seen this 100 vote shift toward Franken, Ritchie told me it would be too difficult to look at the screenshots of the website—static pictures of the site captured throughout the day—and determine which county it was.”

Ricthie is lying.

You don’t in the same breath KNOW “that in one county, ‘there was a 1 left off of a number so there was a hundred vote error’” and NOT KNOW which county that was.

I would guess they are fixing the precinct votes before the candidates reps are allowed in the room to recount the sum of the precinct votes.

Coleman needs to demand a recount at the precinct level with his reps at every precinct!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Wuli]

“Damn, since when have the dems been so dirty?”

Since forever!!!

Dems highest political principal is winning.