Senate recount graphs: Day 7 - Desperate Coleman challenging everything

Up until now, I’ve been posting the graph of Coleman’s “official” lead. But I’m not going to do that anymore. Why? Because Coleman has adopted a strategy of challenging an enormous number of ballots. The “official” lead is no longer a good representation of his position. Instead, he is going to use those numbers to declare “victory” for a fourth time and try to discredit the process. Take a look — both candidates’ challenges are skyrocketing, but Coleman is seriously starting to outpace Franken.

Before I continue with the analysis, I have to say how appalling this strategy is. Coleman has been doing it since the beginning of the recount, too. He is not interested in having the votes be counted properly; he is falsely declaring victory and trying to discredit our hard-working election officials. He has no respect for our electoral process or his own constituents.

But I digress. The point is, Coleman’s “official” lead is no longer relevant, because of his challenge strategy. A somewhat more accurate depiction of the state of the race, then — or at least the most accurate one available to me — is to graph the election judges’ initial rulings. In other words, these are the results if all challenges are declined. Under this scenario, Coleman’s lead has hit a new low:

Of course, not every challenge will be rejected. So, the race will come down to this: Who has improperly challenged more ballots? In particular, has Coleman improperly challenged at least 136 ballots more than Franken has? Over at MN Campaign Report, Joe Bodell has some anecdotal evidence that this could be true:

But a view from inside the recount operation shows just how the Coleman operation is working: not just challenging questionable ballots, but challenging ballots that are clearly Franken votes for the sake of challenging Franken votes, tamping down any possible gains Franken might make in the official tally.

Emerging accounts indicate that ballots with clear intent — an X instead of a filled-in circle, with no other confusing marks, for example — are being challenged by Coleman-affiliated observers. One account indicated that a Coleman observer challenged a clear Franken vote because apparently, “the dots were too big.” In another case, a Coleman volunteer challenged a ballot and was told by the attorney on hand that it was a clear Franken vote, but if they wanted to challenge it “tit-for-tat”, to go ahead.

Here are some interesting numbers: Assuming all challenges are overturned, Coleman leads by 136. So far, he has challenged 156 more ballots than Franken. If most of his extra challenges truly are groundless, Franken could easily win.

UPDATE (12:45 pm): Sorry, my math above was not good. It was written in the haze of waking up early to bring my wife into work for Black Friday. Let me clarify: Coleman’s lead, assuming that all ballots are rejected, is continuing to decline. The question will be how many challenges are actually upheld. If Coleman has 136 challenges fewer than Franken’s upheld, Franken will win.

Because Coleman starts out with a greater amount of challenges, he has more to lose. However, for him to lose the recount, his challenges would need to be overturned at a faster rate than the Franken campaign’s. How much faster? Coleman’s challenges would need to be overturned by approximately 11 percentage points more than Franken’s — for instance, 60 percent of Coleman’s challenges are accepted, compared to 71 percent of Franken’s.

Will that happen? It pretty much depends on whether Joe’s account is accurate.

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Tags: Al Franken, MN-SEN, Norm Coleman

Election 2008, Elections, National, Recount, Research, Votes | Jeff Rosenberg | November 28, 2008

Comments

By Phoenix Woman, November 28, 2008 @ 11:14 am

I see that in the first three days of the recount, before Coleman went on his frivolous-challenge binge, Franken had managed to cut into Coleman’s lead.

Phoenix Woman’s last blog post..Friday Cat Blogging
By John K, November 28, 2008 @ 10:16 pm

What percentage of the challenges is from Coleman and what percentage is from Franken?
By Jeff Rosenberg, November 28, 2008 @ 11:01 pm

52 percent for Coleman, and it’s been rising by about 1 percentage point per day since day 3 of the recount.
By TonyAngelo, November 29, 2008 @ 6:20 pm

I have to take issue with the description of Coleman’s ballot challenge tactics as appalling. Since there is really no downside for a campaign to challenge an opponents ballot it would be stupid for either side not to make frivolous challenges. Coleman wants it to appear as though he was in the lead the whole time and Franken wants it to appear as though he’s cutting into Coleman’s lead. The incentive is there for both campaigns to issue frivolous challenges.

You say that Coleman is not interested in the votes being properly counted, but this has nothing to do with why he’s challenging ballots, all of those challenged ballots will be counted properly after all.
By Midwest Meg, November 29, 2008 @ 6:33 pm

I was an observer for the Franken campaign for two days in Minneapolis. In my brief, limited experience, I didn’t see any frivolous challenges–from either the Coleman or the Franken campaign. At my table, the Coleman campaign didn’t challenge any ballots because the oval wasn’t marked in with pen or anything like that. (And I often had Coleman staff observing at my table.) The only challenges were to ballots that had multiple and goofy write-ins, usually on the back of the ballot with the judicial races. We saw half-dozen or more ballots where the voter repeatedly wrote in the name of “Joe Blow” or something like that. So the question was…….is multiple write-ins of one name a kind of distinguishing mark? And, at least at my table, the campaigns ruled that they were not, unless someone had actually signed off or initialed those write-ins.

I’m hoping my experience was the more rare one. Because I’m hoping that the Coleman campaign frivolously challenged a bunch of ballots that are then given to Al.

I was sobered by the hundreds and hundreds of ballots that I personally witnessed in which the voter voted straight-line DFL in every single race—–except for the Senate race and then they voted for Dean Barkley.

If Al loses, I will blame it on the Independence Party, which is the best ally the GOP has ever had in this state.

I hope the observer who posted at Joe Bodell’s site

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