Posted on 12/02/2008 6:54:48 AM PST by MplsSteve
With 91 percent of ballots recounted, Norm Coleman leads by 344 votes in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. Coleman held a 215-vote lead over Franken after Election Day.
Between now and Nov. 4, Coleman has lost 2,369 votes, and Al Franken has lost 2,498 votes.
By Friday, all of the state's 87 counties should be done with their collective review of 2.9 million ballots.
Dec. 16, the canvassing board will gather to rule on 2,876 ballots challenged by Franken and 3,067 ballots challenged by Coleman.
While it looks like Coleman is leading, it's hard to say how secure his spot is. That's because the almost 6,000 combined challenges have skewed each candidate's running total.
The current GOP is an example of what happens when you try to be everything to everybody!
Nobody is really picking up votes (well, they might be, but you can’t tell by the numbers).
Each candidate is simply challenging ballots for the other candidate, which temporarily subtracts them from the total.
If the challenges are all good, then Coleman is up by 344. If Coleman’s challenges are bad, and Franken’s are good, then Franken could be up by a couple of thousand.
If, as is expected, almost NO challenge is good, it looks like Coleman is still up by about 153 votes.(He’s “up” 344, but he has 191 more challenges).
Of course, some challenges are not against the other candidate, but for themselves (Franken challenges ballots which were rejected and says they are votes for him, for example). That’s why you can’t really figure out how many more votes have been generated by the recount.
The criticisms of Coleman are similar to the criticisms of Romney. Both had to do and say things that would get them elected in extremely liberal states. The Dems know how to wink at such things, but the Rebublicans have a suicide gene that causes them to attack their own without any critical analysis of the situation. The term 'RINO' is frequently abused.
I have been thinking the same think but you said it better.
Doubtful since we are now assured of at least 41 Repubs (we can filibuster any attempt by Reid et. al. to steal the election).
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