Tag: MN-Sen

Da Hill:

The Minnesota Board of Canvassers certified Democrat Al Franken as winner of the state’s Senate race, but incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R) attorneys have vowed to challenge the decision.

After two months of political and legal wrangling by both campaigns since Election Day, the board officially recognized Franken as the victor, marking the latest in a number of dramatic turns of events that have characterized the state’s Senate election.

The board certified Franken’s 225-vote lead over Coleman, moving the Democrat one step closer to unseating the first-term lawmaker. That tally includes both the hand recount of votes throughout the state, as well as hundreds of absentee ballots that had previously been disqualified for no stated, legal reason.

Coleman’s campaign has said it will file an election challenge within the seven days required by Minnesota law. The challenge is expected to revolve around so-called “duplicate” ballots that Coleman alleges were counted twice, as well as an additional 650 disqualified absentee ballots that the incumbent’s campaign argues should have been counted. The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected lawsuits by Coleman on both issues, saying those challenges are better suited to be handled by the Board of Canvassers.

And, of course, earlier in the day, there was this:

The action came hours after the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a bid by Coleman to have hundreds of rejected absentee ballots considered in the recount, prompting the Coleman campaign to say that an election contest, or lawsuit,  “is now inevitable.”

The Supreme Court did not issue an opinion on the merits of Coleman’s claim that the ballots, from mostly Republican-leaning areas, may have been wrongly rejected, saying he could later pursue an “election contest,” or lawsuit, to make his case. Coleman recount attorney Fritz Knaak said the campaign would take that path.

“Given our campaign’s unwavering commitment to ensuring that the vote of no Minnesotan is disenfranchised, today’s ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court is both disappointing and disheartening,” Knaak said in a statement.  

He also said: “Today’s ruling, which effectively disregards the votes of hundreds of Minnesotans, ensures that an election contest is now inevitable. The Coleman campaign has consistently and continually fought to have every validly cast vote counted, and for the integrity of Minnesota’s election system, we will not stop now.”

Oh that is just rich. So rich. Anyone remember when dickface Norm Coleman asked Franken to concede the race, even when an automatic recount loomed? Norm Coleman: once a dickface, always a dickface.

Anyway, the Strib has a few more details on the looming legal battle:

An election contest must be filed within seven days. It would be presided over by a three-judge panel appointed by Minnesota Chief Justice Eric Magnuson. An election certificate could not be issued before a contest is completed.

Such a legal showdown could take weeks to resolve. In addition to the Coleman campaign’s request to have the absentee ballots reconsidered, a lawsuit also include claims by Coleman that some votes in Democratic-leaning areas were counted twice.

The writing is pretty clearly on the wall here, but it brings me great joy to know that Coleman will spend the foreseeable future agonizing over this painfully close loss.

Strib:

Norm Coleman’s term as a U.S. senator ended at noon Washington time on Saturday, and by evening his hopes of winning a second term had been dealt an expected but serious setback as state officials counted previously rejected absentee ballots in St. Paul.

DFLer Al Franken held an unofficial lead of 225 votes over Coleman as this edition of the Star Tribune went to press, according to a newspaper tally of the officials’ count of the absentee ballots. Franken had led unofficially by 49 votes going into the day and gained a net 176 votes from the new ballots.

With the recount complete, focus immediately shifted to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which continued to consider a request from the Coleman campaign to alter the process and add more absentee ballots to be reconsidered. But by early evening there was no word from the state’s highest court as to when it would rule or hear arguments.

Coleman almost certainly can’t win no matter how many legal challenges he files. At this point, here’s the real question: Will Harry Reid fight as hard to seat Al Franken as he’s fighting not to seat Roland Burris?

http://minnesota.publicradio.o…

Just for the heck of it.

Al Franken has taken the lead late in the process. The AP has reported it: http://www.google.com/hostedne… . The remaining challenges are mostly Franken’s so his lead is likely to grow from the 250 votes it is know, (according to dailykos.com), and even from the 2 votes it is according to the AP. There will probably be another recount, some more scrutiny about the rejected absentee ballots that Coleman tried to block and which will probably be reviewed. But, it at the end of it Franken holds a 100 + vote lead he should be seated, regardless of what Larry Sabato says about NH-Sen in 1974. After that much due process that election would be certified and scrutinized, proved beyond a doubt, and Democracy does not become invalid if the margin of victory is small.

P.S. Please vote in the poll, I use it as a counter to see how many people read a given post.  

Today’s Electoral-Vote.com write-up says that Coleman’s lead has dwindled to just FIVE votes (out of some 2.9 million cast), with another 379 Coleman challenges to go today.

I don’t know how many more Franken challenges, absentee ballots, or other miscellany there are to go, though.

Also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v… says that the Lizard People ballot was rejected as an overvote (causing the person who hilariously made this ballot to probably become pissed at the canvassing board), but the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Frankenstin (sic) ballots were accepted as Franken votes.

Also, according to Coleman’s lawyer, “Lizard People” may in fact be the name of a real person.  Hmm, are the dinosaurs coming back???

Finally, it seems that the Minnesota Star-Tribune is seeking the person who marked the now infamous Lizard People ballot.

UPDATE: http://news.google.com/news/ur… says that Franken is up some 262 votes now.  But of course, let’s not forget that there are several thousand challenged ballots and another 1600 rejected absentees yet to be factored in.  Don’t hold your breath, and don’t become complacent either.

A lot of things went under the radar the last couple days, I felt we needed a round up.  

Starting with the last outstanding race of the 2008 elections, MN-Sen.  After two days of going through the Franken challenges, (with the exception of a few Coleman challenges that were incidentally found in the mix) this is where the counting stands: http://senaterecount.startribu…

Of 411 ballots that have been reviewed so far, Coleman is +234 votes, Franken is +64 votes, and Other is +117.  Franken had a high success rate (around 17% by most estimates) which is higher than predictions have been.  It is hard to say how many of those challenges exactly Franken won, because the other category consists of votes Franken won, taking away from Coleman and votes that Franken lost, not moving toward Franken.  

There are around 4,000 withdrawn challenges that need to be counted and added to the SOS website tally.  Those are said to be reported when they are finished being counted.  There are an estimated 1,600 wrongfully rejected absentee ballots that are hung up in the Minnesota Supreme Court to be ruled on in the near future.  And an estimated 700 Coleman challenges to sort through over the coming days.  (Coleman may bring “duplicate ballots” to court.  They are contending not all the ballots counted during the recount had an original.  This would open a whole can of worms because both campaigns challenged 600 ballots total over this while some counties didn’t let them challenge ballots over this.)

The next race with news, FL-Sen.  Alex Sink is jumping through the hoops of a probable candidate.  Many will remember news reports of Mark Begich and Jeff Merkley doing exactly what sink did before becoming candidates:

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the only Democrat serving in Florida’s Cabinet, met recently in Washington with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the chamber’s point man for the 2010 election. She’s clearly the national party’s top choice to run for the seat to be vacated by Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.

Article found here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com…

If I had to make a prediction, I would assume Alex Sink waits until we hear what Jeb Bush decides about a senate race in Florida before announcing whether she plans to run for senate.  

Next on the line is KS-Sen.  Brownback is making his retirement from the senate official tomorrow.  Article found here: http://briefingroom.thehill.co…  

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) won’t seek reelection in 2010 and will explore a run for governor.

He plans to announce his retirement from the Senate on Thursday, reports CNN. Brownback joined the Senate in 1996, succeeding former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R). He has long been a supporter of term limits, and he had pledged to serve only two full terms.

As for NH-Sen:

while popular Gov. John Lynch (D) is also said to be looking into the race.

Here: http://www.rollcall.com/news/3… You need a a subscription for the article.  

I wouldn’t put much stock into a governor considering a senate race.  He will probably just fall back on running for governor.  I doubt Menendez can sweet talk him out of it.  

What do you guys think?  Also recent news I made a comment on but didn’t get much attention, Brad Miller pulled himself out of consideration from NC-Sen in 2010.  http://www.wral.com/news/state…

From the Pioneer Press:

Franken also received unexpected good news when Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann dropped a mini-bombshell, telling the board that in overwhelmingly Democratic Duluth – which has not officially tallied rejected absentees – about 40 percent of that city’s 319 rejected absentee ballots were mistakenly rejected. Gelbmann said the city rejected the votes because either the voter or the witness did not date their signatures. He said he couldn’t find any state law to support such a rejection.

(Hat-tip: Paleo)

Al Franken just scored a couple of big wins today at a meeting of the state canvassing board. First, there’s this:

Some good news for Al Franken: The state canvasing board just voted unanimously to compensate for the loss of those 133 missing ballots in Minneapolis by going back to the recorded Election Night vote totals for this precinct, sparing Al the loss of a net 46 votes.

Followed up by this:

The state canvassing board just voted unanimously that absentee ballots that were initially rejected because of clerical errors — and the current estimate from the hearing is that there could be nearly 1,600 of them, based on some extrapolation — should be counted, probably the single biggest issue that the Franken campaign has been hammering ever since this recount began, and which really seemed up in the air going into this hearing.

The board can’t directly order the county officials to do the counting, only making a formal request to go back and count the votes and then submit amended totals. But many counties have already begun or finished the process of sorting the rejected absentees at the board’s request, and board members did castigate any election officials who wouldn’t do so, with some of them even leaving open the option of seeking a court order if necessary.

Because of all that, it seems very likely that the vast majority of these ballots will be counted before this is over — and it could possibly seal the deal for Franken. Pre-election polling showed him winning the overall pool of absentee ballots by a solid margin, so it seems pretty reasonable to assume that the newly-counted votes will break for Al. If that proves to be correct — and if Norm Coleman is unable to stop it through further litigation — Franken will probably pull ahead of Coleman and win the election.

This is a pretty big deal, although it will surely be challenged tooth and nail by Coleman in the courts. But if these votes are indeed counted, Franken’s chances stand to increase significantly.

For the sake of ending whatever remnants there are to “Franken’s goose is cooked” chatter there may be, I’m giving a simple run-down of the math here.  The numbers I am taking are sourced from the Star Tribune’s results page found here: http://ww2.startribune.com/new…

Every challenged ballot is like taking that vote out of the total count, which is why Coleman and Franken’s numbers have both gone down as the counting has progressed.  Looking at the totals, there are almost 6,000 total challenges, (3,070 challenges by the Coleman campaign, 2,882 challenges by the Franken campaign for a total of 5,952).  Meanwhile, Franken and Coleman have lost only a total of 4,871 votes.  (Coleman has lost 2,373 votes and Franken has lost 2,498 votes).  

Doing the math, 5,952 challenges – total votes lost 4,871 means that, with four counties outstanding, (Wright, Winona, Scott, Rock) and parts of three other counties outstanding, (7% of Ramsey County, 7% of Hennepin County, and 40% of Dodge County) we have found 1,081 votes that were missed by machines.  It is completely impossible to determine who these votes go to, because the results are hidden, for the most part behind challenges.  The only new votes we can determine are in counties where there is actually a net positive for a candidate.  Of these 1,081 new votes, at least 16 votes have gone to Coleman and at least 24 votes have gone to Franken.  

The rest of the new votes are hidden behind challenges.  In fact, the 1,081 number may be high, because Coleman and Franken can challenge ballots that are expected to go for Barkley or others.  We can go county to county.  The largest source of new votes comes from:

~60 votes from Anoka County

~280 votes from Hennepin County

~150 votes from Ramsey County

These new votes will probably make less of a difference than the panel ruling on challenged ballots.  

Star Tribune has picture of nearly 600 challenged ballots asking for you to rule on them.  I don’t know if you need to log in first or what, because the pictures are not working on my computer.  http://senaterecount.startribu…

As of right now for 6,000 challenges, Franken needs to win 216 more than Coleman.  That’s 3,108 to 2,892.  AKA 51.8% to 48.2%.  However, for every challenge that gets thrown out, the percentage Franken needs to win challenges edges up.  

After a week of recounting, with 88% of the votes recounted:

http://ww2.startribune.com/new…

Coleman has added to his lead, partly by challenging more ballots (2885 to 2738), but also

because there aren’t many Democratic areas to recount.  St. Louis County is complete, Hennepin and Ramsey Counties are 87% and 81% complete, respectively.  Of the eight counties not yet started, seven of them went to Coleman.

So is it over for Al?  Without challenges, he’s only picked up 80 votes.  And with the strong possibility that the missing absentee ballots might not be counted, it’s getting grimmer for Franken.