As I’ve already mentioned today, MPR has a great feature with pictures of challenged ballots. As should be expected, the Coleman campaign has made some outrageous challenges, proving once again that they don’t respect our votes. Check these out:
Apparently, the tiny dot in Dean Barkley’s oval is more important than the completely filled-in Franken oval.
Incompetent? Yes. Difficult to figure out intent? Hardly.
Norm, when will you decide that Minnesotans’ voices need to be heard?
MPR has a great piece showing some of the ballots that have been challenged so far. This is a great primer on exactly why we need this recount. Our enlightened state law says that voter intent determines who to count a vote for. Our electronic vote-scanning machines are a good shortcut, but this is not a test on whether voters can operate a scantron machine. In a close election, such as this one, we go through by hand and figure out who each voter intended to vote for.
Here’s an example of a clear vote for Franken that was not counted by the voting machines:
More accurately, he’s made big gains compared to the size of the Coleman lead. Everything seems magnified when the race is this close.
Yesterday, Franken gained a net 43 votes, to decrease the Coleman lead to 172. About 15 percent of the votes have been recounted. If we extrapolate — and take this with a grain of salt, because we really shouldn’t extrapolate — Franken should have enough votes to win. By my math, he’d end up leading by 63 votes.
There’s one catch, though: challenged ballots. So far, Franken has challenged 106 ballots, and Coleman has challenged 115. How these challenges are resolved will almost definitely decide the winner of the Senate race.
On day 1 of the recount, a new twist. The Ramsey County district court has upheld the Franken campaign’s request to gain access to data on rejected absentee ballots. Here’s the key sections from the ruling:
With each passing hour, the Franken Campaign is irreparably harmed in its efforts to ensure that each valid vote is properly counted and to prepare for the procedures that will decide this election. By contrast, the County of Ramsey will suffer no harm from providing information that, even absent plaintiff’s request, it must organize and maintain.
The court has really gotten to the crux of the matter. This is about making sure every vote is counted. Absentee ballots that were improperly rejected should be heard.
Even if we don’t get to 60, every vote moves us closer and closer to real policy change. The 58th Democratic Senator is Mark Begick of Alaska, who is finally declaring victory:
With 100 percent of Alaska’s precincts reporting, Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, had roughly 47.7 percent of the vote, compared with about 46.6 percent for Stevens, according to unofficial results posted on the Alaska Secretary of State’s Web site.
He appears to have bested Stevens by 3,724 votes, according to the posted results.
Assuming that Joe Lieberman is going to reliably vote against Republican filibusters — and if he isn’t, the Democrats made a major miscalculation — the Democrats only need to find 2 moderate Republicans to help them move major legislation. Of course, there are still two seats open, as well; both Al Franken and Jim Martin have excellent chances, which means we could still reach 60 seats.
I would like to emphasize that just because we can move legislation forward without the Republicans doesn’t mean we should. I desperately hope that, in this new session of Congress, we can see a return to bipartisanship, with Senators on both sides of the aisle willing to work together to contribute to our policymaking.
This is simply outrageous. GOP chair Ron Carey does not care about letting Minnesota voters have a choice. He said that “Minnesota voters will decide this election,” but then declared Norm Coleman the winner for a third time.Let’s be clear — again. The will of the voters has not been completely heard yet; that’s why we have a recount. Norm Coleman has not won this election until the votes are counted.
The media, unfortunately for Mr. Carey, didn’t bite. Carey claimed that Franken was being “presumptuous” in traveling to Washington to meet with Democratic Senators. In response, reporters asked: “Aren’t you being presumptuous by saying that Norm Coleman has won this election twice? In fact, the state of Minnesota has not declared anyone the winner.” That reporter was absolutely correct — there is no winner until all ballots have been properly counted.
The most disturbing part was Carey’s answer to that question. Carey seemed to imply that a Franken victory was absolutely impossible, despite the fact that the estimated voting-machine errors will have caused 6000 ballots to go uncounted, and Coleman leads by just over 200 votes. This raises a serious question for me: If Franken wins, which is clearly a possibility, will Norm Coleman accept the people’s decision? He has already said he would step aside to let the “healing” begin — will he?
Watch the whole press conference, courtesy of The UpTake:
On Fox News Sunday, Tim Pawlenty disavowed the debunked Republican claims that ballots has been “found” in an election worker’s car. He also reiterated that there has been no wrongdoing in the Senate recount, and that the process is fair and transparent.
I can’t seem to make the video embed below, but you can watch it at Raw Replay.
Last week, I asked who exactly is buying the Coleman campaign’s histrionics over “fraud” here in Minnesota. The answer: Sean Hannity. Is Hannity the sort of person Minnesotans want to see having an influence on our state’s elections and our policies?
That’s the Star Tribune’s headline for the recount, on the front page of the Sunday paper today. But it must be emphasized, once again, that this is no rematch. This is simply a more accurate depiction of the match.
In other words, we the voters have spoken. We are not getting another chance to vote again; that’s not how it works. We have already elected either Franken or Coleman our next Senator. The question is, who did we really choose?
Since it’s Sunday, how about a football analogy? When one team is close to a first down, and it’s too close to call by just eyeballing it, we don’t redo the last play. No, we call out the “chain gang,” and measure more accurately whether the ball is just past the 1st-down mark or just shy of it. That’s what’s going on here: the play has been run. Now it’s time for the chain gang.
Tim Pawlenty sounds like the guy who can fix the Republican party. Everything he said at the Republican Governor’s Association was dead on:
Pawlenty said that although Republicans idolize Ronald Reagan, some would balk at the compromises he made. “One of the things that gets glossed over is his pragmatism,” he said. “He got stuff done, and he compromised to do it.” [via BrauBlog]
I think just because you bring up the name Joe the Plumber — while people view that as a symbol — but what does that mean, in terms of what Republicans can do to make my health care more affordable, my — filling up my car more affordable? I think just throwing out a symbol or an icon is not enough.
Pawlenty, on paper, seems to fit most of my criteria for a leader of the Republican party:
In advance of a press conference this afternoon with the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Ron Carey called on the League to renew its commitment to a high standard of non-partisanship by disassociating itself from the Democrat front group Common Cause.
The League of Women Voters? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Apparently, there is no group that the Coleman campaign and the Republican party will not attack. The League of Women Voters is one of the most non-partisan, respected groups in this country.
The Republican party in Minnesota needs to take a breather and think about what they are doing here. Their anger, desperation, and willingness to attack absolutely anybody is hurting our state.
UPDATE (3:05 PM): I just received this press release from Common Cause and the League of Women Voters:
Norm Coleman’s right-wing sound machine is really falling apart here in Minnesota. I’ve already pointed out a number of prominent conservative voices that have jumped ship. The latest to do so has been Governor Tim Pawlenty. My friends at Media Matters pointed out a couple of quotes from Pawlenty in the last few days that suggest he’s not willing to parrot the Coleman campaign’s talking points. That raises a question for me: Who is left that takes Coleman seriously?
Ritchie essentially punted. He let Chief Justice Eric Magnuson pick the two Supreme Court Justices and he let Ramsey County District Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin pick the two District Court Judges. Magnuson, a very partisan Republican who is a long time friend and former law partner of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, picked himself and partisan Republican Justice G. Barry Anderson. Gearin picked herself and Judge Edward Cleary (lawyers I have spoken have faith that Gearin and Cleary will be impartial). That leaves us with a Board made up of two partisan Republicans, one partisan Democrat who is bending over backwards to be non-partisan, and two independents. Hmmm…. [emphasis in original]
Okay, sure. I suppose in some respects he did. In the short term, conservative loonies like Michael Brodkorb and Katherine Kersten have won, because they forced the Secretary of State to fill the recount panel with righties. But, I want to emphasize that this isn’t as big a deal as it seems.
Maps I use maps to show the political dynamics of each Congressional district in Minnesota.
The Incredible Shrinking GOP Voter apathy is hurting the GOP this year. But the party's sharp moves to the right may marginalize it for the next decade. I keep track of the indications that the GOP is becoming a fringe party for extremists.
[note: I am currently editing the category structure]
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Jeff Rosenberg | November 20, 2008
