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.
There has been a lot of soul-searching amongst Republicans already, and there will continue to be more. Some say the party needs to reclaim the center, while others insist that the only way to restore the party is to return to ideological purity. The latest examples of the ubiquitous struggle were in a New York Times story yesterday:
Some conservatives want a return to basics, arguing that President Bush abandoned conservative principles by expanding government and driving up spending. Others draw just the opposite conclusion, warning that Republicans have tried to appeal to too narrow a base and that the party must update the focus of conservatism, especially at a time when voters are thinking more about issues like jobs and health care than about abortion and gay rights.
Okay, we didn’t really need the Times to tell us that. The debate is pretty widespread; blog readers are probably well aware of it already. The Republican party will have a long time to think about their predicament, and eventually they will come back stronger. They probably aren’t interested in a liberal blogger’s take, but I’ll give it anyway, because the blogosphere gives me the opportunity to pontificate endlessly.
As always, it’s more difficult than the two simplistic options presented. The truth is, the Republicans need to move simultaneously to the the center and to the right. Let me explain.
Each session of Congress operates under a set of rules known as the organizing resolution. The Democrats should make sure this session’s organizing resolution gives them the capacity to throw Lieberman out if things really don’t work out.
I think we need a compromise here. As I said in Monday’s podcast, I don’t think — and I don’t know anyone who really thinks — that our auto industry has earned a $25 billion bailout. At the same time, now is just a terrible time to let them fail. We’re talking something like 3 million jobs, between the automakers and their suppliers — enough to send our economy into yet another tailspin.
So what to do? I say we keep them afloat just until they can’t completely screw our economy. Give them enough money for 6 or 9 months, and let them try to get their act together in that time. After that, let them go bankrupt; it’s been coming for a long time.
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:
Between the potential pick of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, his meeting with John McCain, and his support of Joe Lieberman, Barack Obama is strongly signaling a new tone in Washington. Any chance that could extend into state politics?
Thanks to my great readers and commenters for keeping me honest regarding Joe Lieberman. They don’t like that I’ve suggested the Democrats should treat him nicely, and I can totally understand that, but I’d like to explain a bit further.
First, I think I can find the most common ground with commenter Karl:
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.
Yet I do have a problem with a potential Secretary of State Clinton in that I simply question whether she is “too big” for the role. Given that the Secretary of State needs to do a lot of her or his most sensitive work in a somewhat quiet, somewhat “under-the-radar” manner, would a Secretary of State Clinton be able to detach herself from the international public eye enough to spend considerable periods of time in a “subtle” context?
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:
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
