Franken vs Coleman: turn on the laughing gas

That's even closer then it was yesterday.... and people are giving Franken flack for refusing to concede until all the votes are in as well as demanding a recount. I sure would in this case.

It will make a good story if in the end he actually wins and just add more to the story that would be Franken as a Rep.

Cracks me up just thinking about it.

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Originally posted by robbie_dee:
In the end, I believe Franken will pull through. And in what a dramatic fashion! The right-wingers will be gnashing their teeth![/QB]

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No kidding. They hate him, almost as much as they do Obama. I'm pretty sure that there's a few Dems in the house who feel the same way.
I can't see him suddenly, how shall I say it...toning it down.

Coleman was asking Franken to concede so that the state of Minnesota could save the $90,000 for the recount. I guess Coleman is a fiscal conservative, or something.

Well, if Coleman is so altruistically concerned about Minnesota "healing", then clearly the best thing for Coleman to do would be to graciously concede the election to Franken.

Then everyone can "heal". Aww! I have the warm fuzzies just thinking about all that healing!

quote:

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Originally posted by BetterRed:
[b]

Ha, he wants there to be 'healing'. Coming from a guy who basically shovelled turds on Sen. Wellstone's grave.

Looks like Franken would win.
In which case, can someone clarify his stance on Iraq and Afghanistan?[/b]

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From his [url=http://www.alfranken.com/pages/iraq]campaign page:[/url]

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After leading us into war under false pretenses, the Bush administration has dug us a deep hole in Iraq. The litany of mistakes is endless: the failure to send enough troops, the botched de-Baathification, the refusal to stop looting in the aftermath of the invasion, the firing of the Iraqi army (essentially telling hundreds of thousands of young Iraqi men, “You’re fired, get out of here, we’re not going to pay you, and take your weapons with you!”) – and especially the Republican Congress’s refusal to do any oversight of the war.

Norm Coleman, as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, didn’t even hold a single hearing into contracting by Halliburton and other corporations – while waste, fraud, and the misappropriation of billions of dollars torpedoed the reconstruction of Iraq. Every dollar that didn’t go towards getting up the electricity and the water, taking care of the sewage, and putting Iraqis to work alienated the population and fueled the insurgency, making a difficult mission impossible and sending the country into total chaos.

And today, Senator Coleman continues to vote against bringing our troops home.

Here’s where I stand:

I say it’s time to leave Iraq. Our troops have served magnificently, but even General Petraeus has stated that military action alone cannot fix Iraq.

It’s been clear for years that this war was a mistake, and that mistake after mistake has been made in the conduct of it. And in my books, on my radio show, and all over this country, I’ve been speaking out for years about this sad, tragic mess. Now it’s time for all of us to come to terms with the truth about the situation there.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]Well, if Coleman is so altruistically concerned about Minnesota "healing", then clearly the best thing for Coleman to do would be to graciously concede the election to Franken.

Then everyone can "heal". Aww! I have the warm fuzzies just thinking about all that healing![/b]

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What will be really interesting is if the canvassing of results, which has already cut the margin by 500 votes, eventually ends up putting Franken ahead even before the recount. Then Coleman's words could really come back on him - although I am sure by then he will change his tune. In the article I linked above, Coleman has already started questioning some of the totals that have come back from the (heavily democratic) Iron Range. Now that doesn't sound too "healing," does it?

[ 08 November 2008: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

32 more ballot boxes to be counted.

[url=http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/08/ruling-helps-franken-in-... Franken sees boost in nail-biter election[/url]

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In a move that could be seen as a benefit to Democrat Al Franken, a Minnesota judge Saturday denied a request from incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to block certain uncounted absentee ballots from being counted in a race separated by–at latest tally–just over 200 votes, in Coleman's favor. That margin has narrowed since the first tallies earlier in the week. Almost 3 million ballots were cast.

According to the court request, the Coleman campaign sought an "emergency temporary injunction" preventing election officials from unsealing, opening, or tallying any absentee ballots that were not inside an official ballot box by midnight election night. Specifically, the campaign was looking to block 32 uncounted ballots from the city of Minneapolis that, according to the campaign in the request, they were notified of late Friday night and that were to be counted the next day.

In a statement, Coleman recount attorney Fritz Knaak said the purpose of the request "was to secure those ballots until we could receive some kind of testimonial assurance, some proof, that they hadn’t been tampered with, that they had been secured and that there will be no question in the mind of the electorate that there had been any wrong doing."

Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin turned down the request "for lack of jurisdiction."

Franken spokesman Andy Barr called it a "sneak attack" on the part of the opposing campaign, because he says his campaign did not find out about this motion until an hour before the court hearing on Saturday.

"They are, to us, pretty clearly trying to do whatever they can to cast doubt on this extremely routine process of canvassing and checking the tabulations and trying to freeze the votes where they were election night where coleman had a lead," Barr told CNN.

Minnesota law mandates a recount when election results are this close.

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Here's a little exercise that allows you to be the scrutineer.

I approached it using standards as I understand them from scrutineering in Canada, or at least tried to.  Didn't do too well. 

 Hee. That was fun. Thanks for posting that Oldgoat.  I was in line with the majority of the results except for a couple.  It looks like  Minnesota law is a little different then Canada, at least from my experience as a ballot counter.

 My favorite was the 'lizard people' for President/VP ballot.  

That was rather fun.  I flew over Minesota on Tuesday.  Looking down I thought I saw some Lizard People making nefarious plans, but I could be wrong, it might have just been the Cohen brothers and a wood chipper. 

 I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'. Bob Newhart

margin of 120 at the end of the day - 64% of the votes counted.

the interesting part will be the review of the so far 1700ish votes challenged by either side.

There is also a legal challenge from the Franken people about the unusually high proportion of absentee and mail-in ballots that have been disallowed.

 From 538.com 

Quote:

According to the latest counts provided by the Star Tribune and the Minnesota Secretary of State,
Republican Norm Coleman appears to have expanded his narrow lead over
Al Franken on Day 4 of the recount process. The Star Tribune now puts
Coleman's lead at 180 votes, and the Secretary of State, 167 votes.
(The Star Tribune's tally appears to be inclusive of all of the
Secretary of State figures and is probably the more authoritative
estimate). Coleman's lead had been 215 votes before the recount process
began, but had become as small as 115-120 votes at other stages of the
recount process.

It is unclear, however, whether the running
counts provided by the Star Tribune and Secretary of State are any
longer providing useful information. This is because the percentage of
challenged ballots has now reached epidemic levels. Among the
relatively small number of ballots added today to the Secretary of
State's nightly estimate, the Coleman campaign challenged 14.2 ballots
for every 10,000 cast, and the Franken campaign 12.2 for every 10,000
cast. This rate of challenges was almost twice that observed in
Friday's counting, and 4-5 times as much as in the first two days of
ballot counting on Wednesday and Thursday.

Suppose that there is some relatively large number
of cases in Hennepin County (which Franken won by 100,000 votes on
Election Day) in which ballots regarded by the optical scanners as
undervotes in fact show some indication of voter intent for Franken.
However, these ballots run along a spectrum from those where the ballot
is completed almost perfectly, to those where there is only the
faintest indication of voter intent. If the Coleman campaign is
challenging virtually every instance in which an election judge rules
that there was in fact voter intent for Franken, and the Franken
campaign simultaneously is challenging virtually every instance in
which the judge rules that there was not clear enough evidence of voter
intent, then both sides will rack up high numbers of challenges. All of
these ballots, for the time being, are being reported as non-votes.
When the canvassing board evaluates them in December, however, only
Franken can gain ground, as they will either be ruled to be legitimate
votes cast for Franken, or will continue to be regarded as non-votes.

 My next favourite  challenge besides the lizard people one is that Coleman is challenging ballots that are clearly marked McCain and clearly marked Franken, citing the reason that since they voted McCain they must have intended to vote Coleman and just made a mistake.   Too funny.

  I wonder if that logic floats the other way too? 

"Coleman recount attorney Tony Trimble said that Franken would lose his lead next week when all the challenged votes are allocated to each candidate. Before the Canvassing Board met, the two campaigns had withdrawn several thousand ballot challenges, and those votes have yet been allocated. That is expected to happen early next week."

http://tinyurl.com/84j29m

Because Franken withdrew more challenges, it is expected that Coleman will gain votes in the allocation.  However, the Star-Tribune projected that when all is said and done, Franken will be ahead by 78 votes.

http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/

But Nate Silver at 538, projects that Coleman will come out ahead by 28 votes, with this caveat:

" Not all withdrawn challenges, however, can safely be added to the opposing candidate's total. Fundamentally, there are two types of challenges:

Type 1: You can challenge an opponent's ballot that you were hoping to get excluded;

Type 2: You can challenge one of your own ballots that you were hoping to get included.

. . . .

 In practice, however, it appears that Franken's pile contains a relatively higher instance of Type 2 challenges. There are at least three reasons to conclude so:

1. Although this isn't necessarily meaningful, Franken had a higher proportion of Type 2 challenges among those challenges that were not withdrawn.

2. Prior to the challenge phase beginning, the Franken campaign claimed that it would gain ground if all challenges were rejected, pulling 4 ballots ahead of Coleman. A necessary implication of Franken's claim is that he had a higher proportion of Type 2 challenges. If I try and work backwards from the Franken campaign's math, I show that Franken now has a lead of something like 66 votes after accounting for withdrawn challenges."
 

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Even after that, there are as many as 1600 absentee ballots that the Franken camp claims were wrongly rejected that must be counted by December 31 under a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling:

"[T]he two candidates, the Secretary of State, and the county auditors and canvassing boards should implement a process for identifying and counting wrongfully rejected absentee ballots. But -- and here's the kicker -- both of the candidates and the local elections officials must mutually agree that any given absentee ballot has been rejected in error. If such a consensus emerges about a particular ballot, it will be opened, counted, and the revised results will be forwarded to the state's Canvassing Board."

It's not clear what happens if there is no agreement.  Presumably, the matter goes back to the Supreme Court for determination.

These people clearly have no idea how to hold an election.  Canadians certainly vote for assholes in large numbers, but at least we count the ballots.

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