Month: November 2008

The latest from the Star-Tribune with 77% of the votes recounted:

http://ww2.startribune.com/new…

Coleman is now up 210 votes, and Coleman is challenging 124 more ballots than Franken 1625 to 1501.

Ramsey County is 55% complete with a Franken gain of 40.  Even with all of the questionable Coleman challenges, I doubt Franken can overtake

Coleman in the December review.  There’s to just too much of a gap for Nate Silver’s projection to come through.

And most of the counties that haven’t reported anything yet are smaller and mostly rural–and Coleman won most of them.

So is it over for Al?

(From the diaries – promoted by James L.)

Tom “The Carpetbagger” McClintock’s lead is down to 359 votes, down from a lead that was once over 1,000 votes. The gap closed with the addition of provisional and absentee ballots from Nevada County (Brown’s strong area in the district). There are now 2 counties left to report (El Dorado and Placer), which happen to be two of the closer counties. McClintock right now has slight leads in both of them, but provisionals are expected to favor Brown at a higher rate than normal ballots.

According to this post at edhtelegraph, Brown has a decent chance of winning:

Results today from Nevada County indicate Brown is getting 6 percentage points more of the provisional votes than Tom McClintock compared to the proportion of regular and mail-in ballots.

If the remaining uncounted ballots in Placer and El Dorado Counties follow the same pattern where the uncounted mail-in ballots match the proportions from November 4 while Brown gets a 6% edge of the provisional ballots then Brown will squeak out a win. This assumes that 10% of the provisional ballots are no good.

Let’s hope these remaining ballots come out this way. I think the big question mark will be who the absentee ballots favor, while provisionals should definitely favor Brown.

UPDATE (DavidNYC): Apparently, Placer County has finished counting and Brown is now 1,793 votes back.

LATE UPDATE (DavidNYC): The Sacramento Bee says that only 4,500 ballots are left to be counted in the whole district. Brown would need 70% of those to pull even.

ANOTHER UPDATE (DavidNYC): This piece says that only 4,100 votes are uncounted and that McClintock has all but declared victory. However, in another twist, the Brown camp says that there were some 10,000 undervotes district-wide. The issue, of course, is what percentage of these were intentional undervotes.

The problem for Brown, though, is that right now, the margin stands at 0.6%, just outside the 0.5% threshhold which would mandate a hand-recount of 10% of the ballots. So we might not get to find out if there were systemic machine problems that produced false undervotes. No matter what, this one is looking extremely tough right now.

So sayeth MSNBC:

Also expected Monday — an announcement that former U.N. Ambassador and Energy Secretary in the Clinton administration, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, will be Commerce Secretary.

This would bump up Lt. Gov. Diane Denish to the top office in New Mexico, giving her a leg up over all other comers — including, perhaps, Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez, who is currently raising money for another run, but is mum on what exactly he’ll be running for.

In the diaries, Chad has more.

SSP’s Official Approved Movie List™:

2001: A Space Odyssey

Airplane!

Aliens

Back to the Future

Batman Begins

Dark Knight

Empire Strikes Back

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ghostbusters

Goldfinger

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dem

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Office Space

Pulp Fiction

Return of the Jedi

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Rahm

Star Wars

This Is Spinal Tap

Wayne’s World

What’s on your list?

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (11/17-19, likely voters, 11/10-12 in parentheses):

Jim Martin (D): 45 (46)

Saxby Chambliss (R-inc): 51 (49)

(MoE: ±4%)

The newest R2K poll of the Georgia senate runoff shows Jim Martin falling further behind incumbent Saxby Chambliss at 51-45, but Markos points out an interesting detail: the previous week’s poll, which was 49-46, found that the respondents had voted 49-47 for Chambliss in the general election (which closely mirrored the actual 49-46 result). This sample, however, finds that the respondents voted 52-44 in the general, suggesting a more Republican-leaning batch.

The fluctuation may also reflect some difficulty in pinning down who exactly fits the ‘likely voter’ mold for a runoff election: is it anyone who voted in November, or only someone who votes with regularity? Martin probably owes his close showing in the general to high turnout from young and/or African-American voters with sporadic voting track records but who were highly motivated to come out for Obama… and Obama seems hesitant to expend too much political capital on this race right now. On the other hand, with Republicans probably demoralized and undermotivated to return to the polls, and with a lot of Obama staffers deployed to the state, it’s at least possible Martin could pull out the upset through disparities in ground game.

GOP Sen. Sam Brownback is retiring from the Senate in 2010, and Dems have one big name on the bench who could actually make a race of his open seat — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who will be conveniently term-limited out of office that same year. However, Sebelius is also being rumored as a possible Secretary of Labor choice in Obama’s cabinet, and if he makes that move, that would likely take her out of contention. Accepting a Cabinet job and quitting after, say, twelve months to run for elected office again strikes me as something that would probably be frowned upon. (Yes, I’m aware that Mel Martinez and Mike Johanns both pulled this move, but each of those gentlemen served in Bush’s Cabinet for nearly three years each.)

Assuming that Sebelius doesn’t run (for whatever reason), is there anyone on the Dem bench who could make this race interesting? I have my doubts, but anything is possible. On the GOP side of the aisle, 1st CD Rep. Jerry Moran is running, and 2nd CD Rep. Todd Tiahrt could very well join him in a few months. Our best hope here is for a contentious and divisive Republican primary. Don’t let us down, Todd!

As for the Governor’s office, it seems likely that Sam Brownback will run for the seat himself. Are there any Dems who have a prayer against him? Of all the term-limited Democratic gubernatorial seats up in 2010, this one may be the likeliest to slip back into GOP hands.

As our fellow Swingnuts are well aware, President-elect Obama’s cabinet appointments can and likely will have big reprecussions for downballot races throughout the nation in coming years. So James and I, out of a deep desire to help John Podesta and his extremely busy transition team, have put together the following list of suggestions so that Obama can, well, maximize his impact on the country:

Secretary of Interior: Mark Begich

Secretary of Defense: Ike Skelton

Secretary of Commerce: Byron Dorgan

Attorney General: Charlie Justice

Patent Office Commissioner: Jim Matheson

FCC Commissioner: Jeff Van Drew

SEC Commissioner: Walt Minnick

EPA Administrator: Kathy Dahlkemper

OMB Director: Alex Sink

White House Chaplain: Tom Perriello

Drug Czar: Paul Carmouche

What other good ideas do you guys have?

Two weeks after his ass was kicked out of office, Mr. Sununu apparently still does not get the message. Just like his father did with the State Legislature back in the 80s, John carries on the time-honored Sununununu tradition of obstructing the opposition at every turn. Case in point below.

Sen. Mikulski brings up an ammendment to the auto bailout and my Junior Senator (surprise, surprise) objects therefore cutting off any further debate to the measure. Well, the old bull is having none of that and not-so-kindly reminds he and the rest of the GOP exactly why they went down in flames on Election Day.

It gets really good about 2 minutes in. No doubt the loser left the gallery with his tail between his legs.

“Boy am I sorry that that’s the last act of John Sununu in the Senate.” …and not a moment too soon.

A key win for Mary Jo Kilroy:

A federal judge in Columbus ruled Thursday that disputed provisional ballots must be counted in one of the nation’s final undecided congressional races. …

About 1,000 ballots are in dispute in the House race because of defects such as voters failing to both print and sign their names.

Marbley’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed last week by supporters of Stivers, who argued the ballots were invalid because they were missing either a printed name or a signature, or the two were interchanged on ballot envelopes.

In his ruling, the judge said the plaintiffs never disputed that the voters who used the provisional ballots were eligible, properly registered and voted in the correct precinct, and that not counting the ballots would disenfranchise legitimate voters. His ruling sides with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who had said the ballots should be counted because the problems were due to poll worker error.

Punctuating his ruling with a reading of Ohio’s voter fraud statute, Marbley called unfounded the plaintiffs’ contention that allowing the disputed ballots to be counted would promote fraud. He said election officials have ways to double-check the validity of all the disputed votes.

These thousand ballots are from Franklin County, the population center of the district and Kilroy’s base. It’s especially heartening to see the judge directly eviscerate classic GOP phony fraud claims. Marbley stayed his ruling, however, so that the Republicans can appeal. Presumably the Sixth Circuit will issue a ruling soon, hopefully affirming the district court.

In other OH-15 news, rural, red Union County completed its recount and Steve Stivers’s lead moved up to 479 votes. But that hardly seems like enough – there are apparently some 27,000 ballots left to be counted in Franklin, so it’s pretty difficult to see how Stivers will hold on. (Some of those ballots are provisionals which will be rejected, though.) In a way, this race is almost the inverse of WA-08, where early returns are liable to be reversed as the tally progresses.