That’s the problem, I think. If they were recieved on time, they should have been counted already. The race is close, and all of a sudden, all these extra ballots start showing up after the fact.
There was a similar problem with a bunch of ballots that were left in somebody’s car. Not exactly the most secure storage. It opens the door for complaints when recount numbers start not matching up with the original counts.
I’m hearing a lot of boo hooing from Republicans that Coleman’s lead keeps shrinking, but I have yet to see any actual evidence of fraud or tampering.
The Fox News piece is a joke. All insinuation, no evidence.
Who needs evidence? See post #181.
I like the way they slipped a mention of Acorn in even though it really does not apply to Minnesota. Fox probably already knows the recount will go to Franken and they are trying to play the hurt party first. But like them I have no evidence either. 
I believe these may be ones that were run through the optical scanner, but did not register a vote. (This happens more often with absentee ballots, because they don’t get the explanation from a poll worker on how to fill out the ballot correctly.)
The Franken campaign was asking that these be looked at by humans, to determine if they could see a clear vote on them. That is what will be done with ALL the ballots during the recount.
Of course, Franken wanted that done now because Hennepin County went strongly for Franken; if these absentee ballots went the same way he would then be in the lead by a couple hundred ballots. That would give a psychological advantage going into the recount.
And the author of that piece’s blog is full of anti-Obama crap and has a few articles praising Palin. He’s no journalist.
The Fox article also seems to have misleading information in it - for example, it says that if a voter doesn’t vote in a contested matchup, then the machine rejects it in order for the voter to mark the ballot for that competition. That’s not how it worked in Robbinsdale (a north MPLS suburb), at least for me. I didn’t vote in any of the judge elections - I didn’t follow these, had no information on which to base a decision, and thus left those contest to those who did - and my ballot went into the box just fine. No beeps, no returns, nothing.
When I voted, there were a couple of people in front of me for whom the machine did beep (the beep indicating an error) - when the voter acted surprised as to the beep, the election official indicated that he or she should feed it in again. Sometimes it beeped again, sometimes it didn’t. I remember the official saying something about how “it’s been beeping a lot like that,” but there wasn’t really any investigation about why (which probably couldn’t be done anyway, either to the machine or to ask the voter any questions about his or her ballot). I did find that rather strange, but as long as I didn’t get any beeps, I left it alone.
In Minnesota, most (I don’t know if it’s all) ballots are of the fill-in-the-bubble type, which are then read by an optical scanner.
There are a percentage that register either as a multiple vote (more then one candidate chosen) or no vote. In elections that aren’t even close, no one takes the time to hand examine those ballots.
In a close election, those are all looked at individually, to see if it is possible to tell what the voter was trying to do. In no vote situations, maybe the voter circled the name or put a check mark after it, rather then filling in the circle. In multiple votes, maybe the filled in circle got sloppy and over ran into anothe circle, or maybe one circle was filled in by mistake, crossed off, and another circle filled in.
The machines (ES&S Model 100’s, modified with remote reporters) can be set to beep & reject for both undervotes (leaving a race blank) and overvotes (voting for 2 candidates for the same office).
In Hennepin County, most were set to reject overvotes, but allow undervotes. Mainly because of those Judge elections you mentioned. So many of them are unopposed, and voters just skip them. My ballot had 54 races, and at least half of them (Judges, Soil & Water Conservation Commissioners, etc.) had only a single candidate. I voted in every one, but many, many voter do not. Beeping at those would really slow down the voting process.
Another problem with the Fox News report regarding the sudden jump in votes in two harbors.
Before the canvas, Franken’s vote count was zero. As was Coleman’s. As was Barkley’s. The old farts hadn’t sent in there vote totals, and that was caught in the canvas. Pretty straight forward. And the kind of thing a canvas is set up to catch.
You’ve mischaracterized the issue. It’s not a matter of them not being received on time. There were rejected for a variety of reasons including the judgement call of the signatures not matching and the lack of election official’s signatures which is out of the hands of the voters.
And now this in…
Franken won his challenge in Ramsey Co. to get the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected. This was considered key in Franken’s quest to get improperly rejected ballots to counted. The coleman campaign will have access to the same information, of course, but they argued that it shouldn’t be released so it remains to be seen if they will stick to their guns on that principle or start going after the data themselves (especially in Republican-leaning areas).
The county has until the end of today to turn the information over.
Really?
This really is an absolute lie, kept alive by people who hope to benefit by casting doubt on the ballot counting.
I know Cindy Reichert, and she is as honest and obsessive about ballot integrity as anyone I have ever seen. And there is obvious evidence of her impartiality – she is attacked by everybody, from the far left Green Party/IRV supporters to this libelous attack by the far right ex-Legislator Knaak for the Coleman campaign. That people from all parts of the political spectrum are mad at her testifies to her strictly equal enforcement of the voting laws.
I heard a story on NPR this week about a local race somewhere (don’t know where) this cycle that was decided by a coin flip.
–Cliffy
Interesting is one way of putting it. Apparently there have been numerous problems with integration there. http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200202/04_williamsb_africans/somalis
Coleman’s margin has shrunk to 181 thanks largely to a bunch of old machines in St. Louis county (Duluth) that failed to read lightly marked ballots. Coleman lost 34 votes off his lead on the first day of the recount.
Coleman’s lead down to 187 votes.
In this kind of situation, there really should be some provision for a runoff between the top two finishers.