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?
Wow. A true sign that the GOP is lost in the wilderness.
On the chance that Coleman doesn’t win the recount in the MN Senate race (which is becoming more likely by the day), some think he’d be an excellent choice for chair of the Republican National Committee:
…a Republican colleague of Mr. Coleman’s on Wednesday floated his name as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“Somebody like Norm Coleman would be great,” said the senator, speaking to a small group of reporters at a Capitol Hill steakhouse on the condition of anonymity.
He’d be a “great” choice to lead the Republican party? A man who always makes the politically expedient choice, who changes his identity every year or two, and whose convictions still aren’t clear after six years in the Senate? Coleman would be one of the worst possible choices. He’d just reinforce the Republican brand of dishonesty and political gamesmanship.
But please, don’t let me stop you. I’d love to see Norm as RNC chair — especially because it would mean he’s no longer representing me.
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.
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.
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?
Sad news for Norm Coleman. He’s dropping out of an intra-party race for one of the most partisan positions in the Senate: head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. That’s the committee that flooded our state with disgusting ads throughout the Senate race.
Why is Coleman dropping out? Is it because he’s pitched himself to Minnesotans as someone who will work across the aisle? Well, he did do that, but that isn’t why he’s dropping out:
Sen. Norm Coleman (Minn.) called Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) Thursday afternoon and told him he was dropping out of the race for National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman to focus on the recount in his 206-vote win over Democratic challenger Al Franken.
You know, this is actually sweet justice. It was backlash against the NRSC’s disgusting ads that put Coleman in the position he’s in; now it’s holding him back from running the program that will run those ads in other contests.
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
