| Counted a "YES" vote for Franken | Counted a "NO" vote for Coleman |
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Posted on 12/31/2008 9:04:18 AM PST by rhema
The five-member state canvassing board voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a painstaking recount of roughly 2.9 million ballots cast on Nov. 4 in Minnesota's undecided U.S. Senate race. They did so without declaring a winner because there are approximately 1,350 absentee ballots yet to be tallied.
Al Franken, the Democratic challenger, leads the recount by 50 votes and is coming awfully close to claiming victory. That is premature. U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent, who did declare victory the morning after the election, says Franken's margin is illusory. He may be right.
Let us say it again. We do not know who won. How we decide a statistically tied election is more important right now than who is declared the winner. It will take time. We can get through it.
So where are we in our post-election drama?
Act I was the Election Day tally, when voting machines counted nearly 2.9 million ballots in the U.S. Senate race. Two weeks later, the canvassing board's audited total gave Coleman a 215-vote lead, well below one-hundredth of 1 percent. That triggered a ballot-by-ballot hand recount.
Act II, still under way, is the recount and canvass. Tuesday's decision ends the hand recount of all ballots cast on Election Day. The recount added several hundred votes that were not counted by voting machines. Challenges by the two campaigns switched some votes. It is on the basis of this recount that Franken has a 50-vote lead. The canvassing board has agreed to count improperly rejected absentee ballots, which we have dubbed the IRABs. These ballots were not counted in Act I but should have been; some will be added into the count in Act II. Which ones get counted has been left up to the two campaigns. The board plans to decide on the IRABs next week, finishing its recount and canvass and bringing down the curtain on Act II.
Act III will be the election contest, when the candidate on the short end at the end of Act II will seek to undo that result in court. It is possible — although not likely — that the loser of Act II will ride off into the sunset without going to court. If that happens, Act III is canceled and the winner of Act II goes to Washington. Time is important but fairness is paramount.
The referees of the recount — the jurists and secretary of state who make up the canvassing board, and local election officials around the state — are trying hard to get it right. Able advocates for the two candidates have shadowed them. Meetings have been open and viewable on the Internet. Every contested vote has been shown to anyone who wants to look. These checks and balances take time, and Tuesday's final approval of the recounted totals — eight weeks after Election Day — was a great accomplishment.
This week, the review of IRABs by local officials is stumbling because the Minnesota Supreme Court has refused to empower the referees. The court has required that Franken and Coleman agree on which ballots to count. The resulting partisan confusion threatens to keep many IRABs out of the count in Act II; how much better if the recount refs were in charge.
We see this as a three-act drama. If, by this time next week, Al or Norm is declared the winner of the recount — that is, at the end of Act II but before Act III — there will be a rush to put that man in the seat immediately. We could imagine a scenario where the Democratically controlled U.S. Senate would be happy to do this if Franken maintains his margin.
That would be a slap in the face to Minnesota fairness.
State law includes the right of an election contest. Seating either man while that is pending will be seen as a partisan power play that breaks faith with the spirit of the law. A court contest need not be drawn out but it is the candidate's right. Norm and Al can cool their heels until it's over.
Stuart Smalley........ugh, ugh!!
The media is constantly putting out the idea that Franken is in the lead so that they’ll have an outraged mob should they not be able to pull this out behind the ballot counter.
There is no such thing as a lead in a recount. It’s no longer a race, but supposed to be merely a confirmation of the totals. But of course with cheating democrats, they’ll continue to vote long after the polls have closed to “secure” a win.
Perhaps the best solution all around would be to continue to recount the ballots for the next six years. Better than Al Franken, anyway.
Why do I mention this? Because the present recount in Minnesota uses one standard for all except one county, but a different one in that one county where there were 133 more votes counted than were cast on election day, most of them for Franken. This is the same violation as was found in Florida in 2000.
Sometimes these things are as plain as the nose on your face, if you choose to look.
Congressman Billybob
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As well as a hundred and something that existed only on the machines and could not be located in the real world.
The recount added several hundred votes that were not counted by voting machines.
btt
You'll have to translate that clause "if you choose to look" for Minnesota DFLers. Inventing votes they know; "choosing to look" isn't in their lexicons.
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Funny you should mention that.
The news from 2015: Senate recount is settled at last
. . .Coleman’s last big push for votes — the Hail Mary effort that produced this morning’s Supreme Court decision — was his “Working Together to Get Things Done” campaign, introduced in April 2013 as an opportunity for supporters to scour their garages for stray Coleman ballots and finish off their spring cleaning at the same time.
Through the cleanup program, Coleman’s vote total eventually pulled even with Franken’s. The decisive moment came when Coleman neighbor Herb (Buck) Anderson claimed to have found the soiled remnants of three absentee ballots near a mouse hole in the back of his garage. Former FBI investigators on retainer to the Coleman campaign were able to reconstruct the ballots and prove through forensic analysis that the markings in the Coleman ovals were lead-based, while the Franken markings were chemically consistent with mouse droppings.
A one-vote Coleman win seemed assured based on the so-called “Buck ballots,” until Anderson’s wife, Alida, stepped forward with the three Franken ballots that had been jammed in her vacuum cleaner filter. It was these ballots that eventually resulted in today’s Supreme Court decision. The Andersons’ divorce was finalized last year.
Reached for comment in Hollywood on the set of the new reality show he’s jointly producing with 89-year-old Playboy founder Hugh Hefner — tentatively titled “The Viagra Monologues ” — Franken explained that his Senate campaign had been satire all along and referred further inquiries to his accountant.
Coleman, who is living temporarily in an ice-fishing shack he rents from a well-heeled GOP contributor, could not be reached.
The Supreme Court’s decision is, of course, largely symbolic, since the 2008 U.S. Senate seat term expired last year.
Too late. I’ve been getting slapped in the face everyday since the election.
After 4000 years, Iraqis haven't moved beyond wipping their ass with their bare hand, and yet they can hold a more dignified and honest election than the US.... be no damn wonder the Dems want us out of Iraq.... the Iraqi elections make them look bad
Lest anyone forget, Act 0 was the Election Day tally WITHOUT the following two weeks which, contrary to all laws of probability, whiddled Coleman's 700-vote lead down to 215 like a buzz saw through balsa wood.
That is why Act III will be in the courtroom.
| Counted a "YES" vote for Franken | Counted a "NO" vote for Coleman |
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Stalin once said it didn’t matter how people voted, it only mattered who counted the votes. Who are these people in MN who are conducting the recount, and who is watching them? I am deeply concerned because the Dims are past masters at stealing elections, and like Stalin, believe only in power, not honesty or fairness.
Were more ballots counted than people registered to vote?
WOW. Did they employ the psychic bureaucrats from Broward County for that one?
And most Americans will not care one way or the other and will continue to believe that Democrats are reasonable and trustworthy.
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