I’ve been watching
http://ww2.startribune.com/news/metro/elections/returns/2008/recount/msenco.html
And according to that, Coleman has been slowly but steadily increasing his lead. Not much counting left…
Are there any forks left around here?
It doesn’t really mean a damn thing until the challenged ballots are reviewed, Colemans lead was steadily shrinking while the challenges were low so hes basically challenged every possible ballot he could since then. This recount is completely meaningless, the race will be decided when they go over the challenged ballots.
But only initially, right? It’s one of the challenged ballots, so they haven’t made final decisions on these things, have they?
The guy filled in the circle next to Franken’s name but wrote in “Lizard People” on all the races (as far as I could see). However, he also filled in the circle next to “Lizard People” on his other races, but didn’t fill in the circle next to his “Lizard People” write-in on the Senate race. Why they would count it as an overvote for writing in a name but then NOT voting for it? Of course, the whole thing is bizarre – why write in the name if you’re not voting for them? Though clearly somebody writing in “Lizard People” isn’t exactly taking the whole thing seriously.
I think you’re not taking Democracy very seriously.
Yes. If Coleman challenges a ballot then it doesn’t get counted. Since Coleman is challenging votes that went to Franken, the challenge review can only yield more votes for Franken.
Franken is doing the same thing, but 538.com mentioned that Franken has better lawyers and so his challenges are more likely to hold. Still, we won’t really know anything until we find out the result of the challenges.
I think you’re confusing two things.
-
The recount is quite meaningful, as it will eventually produce a final count of all the ballots that have been included in the count thus far. (There’s also an outstanding issue of uncounted absentee ballots which aren’t covered by the recount.) It has already narrrowed down the scope of any disputes considerably: only ~300,000 ballots in 11 counties remain to be recounted, and in those counties and precincts that have been counted already, there remain only ~5600 challenges to resolve, the vast majority of which will be resolved quite easily.
-
The running count of Coleman’s lead is quite meaningless, because while both candidates are now instigating large numbers of bogus challenges, it’s apparently impossible to discern (a) whether one candidate’s filed a higher percentage of bogus challenges than the other, or (b) what sort of ballots each campaign is challenging, i.e. ballots that would have otherwise been counted for the other candidate, or ballots that were counted as no vote but could have conceivably been called a vote for their own candidate, or what.
The Franken-Coleman Full Employment for Attorneys Act.
Very short-term full employment, though - they’ll all probably be laid off before Christmas. (Oh, the heartbreak!)
I’m sure they’ll find other ways to fill their time. I think it was Twain who said, “A town that’s too small for one lawyer can certainly support two.”
At a meeting this evening, I heard that those 133 ballots had been found. They were in an envelope marked 1-3 when they are actually 3-1 (Ward 3, Precinct 1).
Also, the internal count by the Minnesota DFL Party shows Franken pulling ahead of Coleman by 22 ballots. These numbers are different from the official ones, which exclude all challenged ballots – these internal number allocate challenged votes according to the original decision by the election judge.
I’ve been wondering what this means – what does “allocates challenged votes according to the original decision by the election judge” mean? Who’s the election judge? When did the election judge make a decision about the challenged ballots? Was it on election night, or during the recount itself?
In short, how reasonable an assumption is it to assume the original decision by the election judge will be upheld in the end?
OK, here’s how it worked at the precincts where I was a challenger (and that’s pretty similar around the state, since the Secretary of State gave quite a bit of instruction & training to the officials doing this):
The ‘election judge’ was an official appointed by the Secretary of State – I think officially they were sworn in as deputy Secretary’s of State. They were mostly local city or county employees, often from the city clerk or city attorney office. Mine was the actual City Attorney of the largest city in the vicinity.
She sat at the center of the table, with a stack of uncounted ballots in front of her. On either side of her sat 2 election poll workers, picked (hired) from the same set of people who work at the polls on election day. (And I think they balanced by party – 1 Republican and 1 Democrat.) Then at the ends of the table sat the 2 campaign observers/challengers. (And sometimes a second pair of campaign observers sat on the opposite side of the table, looking at the ballots upside down.) Meanwhile the site attorneys from each campaign were prowling around overlooking, the non-partisan observers (League of Women Voters, FairVote Minnesota, etc.) were watching from behind a behind a rope, and there were chairs for the general public to sit behind the rope and watch.
The election judge would take a ballot from the pile in front of her, look at it, say that it was a vote for Coleman, Franken, or “other”. If it was “other”, she would put it onto the ‘other’ pile in the center of the table. Coleman or Franken ones she would slide the ballot to either the Coleman or Franken side, to the poll worker on that side, who would take it and place it in the Coleman or Franken pile. All watched by all the observers, who were looking very closely at each ballot. (They were the only ones permitted to actually touch the ballots. Campaign observers were strictly prohibited from that. We even had to remove all pens & pencils from our pockets. There were red pens on the table – we had to use one of those to write anything down.)
If they saw a problem, that was when they would challenge it. Actually, you were challenging the decision of the election judge to place the ballot in the Coleman, Franken, or ‘other’ pile. So then it was placed in one of 2 other piles, for ballots challenged by Coleman and ones challenged by Franken.
The election judge had the legal authority to dismiss “frivolous” challenges, but they had obviously been instructed to do so rarely. They allowed some that seemed pretty obvious to me. They did not argue about it, and stopped observers from the other side from arguing. They just said “stop–there’s no point in arguing it – we don’t decide it here. It gets kicked up to the Canvassing Board to decide, if you choose to challenge it.”
After the whole precinct was divided up into these piles, the poll workers went through and counted the piles into bundles of 25, with everybody watching & counting along. If anybody disagreed, or lost track, or the counter got distracted by excitement at another table, we started the count over for that bundle. Then we counted the bundles of 25, and got a total for each campaign. (You could also challenge a ballot during this, if you noticed something.)
Finally, the site supervisor compared these recounted totals to the totals from the machines on election day, and the total ballots cast. They then announced that to all the people present.
Of our 10 precincts, 5 matched exactly. 4 had differences due to challenges, and the last precinct had 1 less paper ballot than the machine count from election day. After being counted 3 different times, by 3 different counters, all watched by multiple observers, we all accepted the new number. The poll workers stated that occasionally a ballot jams in the counting machine, so they take it out, smooth out the paper, and feed it through again. But sometimes it actually was counted before it jammed. (They are supposed to check the machine tape to see if it was counted or not, but sometimes people forget.) So then a vote is counted twice, but there is only 1 paper ballot in the recount, so it is corrected there.
The process was very well run, very careful and meticulous, and as a challenger, an odd combination of tension and tedium.
To me, it seems like the original decision by the election judge was reasonably accurate. They are paid local government employees, not campaign people. And they were being watched by observers, ready to challenge if they disagreed. So I would think they would try to give a fair judgment call on each ballot.
The one thing I noticed (and others mentioned, too) was a bit of legalistic bias by the election judges. For example, a ballot with ovals filled in in front of both names, but then one oval X’ed out and “no!” written in after that name. Election Judges tended to say that ballot was ‘spoiled’, it shouldn’t count for either candidate and goes in the ‘other’ pile. But the observer for the candidate without the “no!” behind their name disagreed, saying that the voter clearly intended to vote for their candidate. Those will end up being decided by the Canvassing Board.
Overall, I think it’s pretty reasonable to think that the election judges’ call during the recount will mostly be upheld. But it’s so close, just a few changes by the Canvassing Board (like one per 75 precincts) could make the difference. (To say nothing about the 13,000 rejected absentee ballots, about 10% of which appear to have been rejected in error. And those are still sealed – only the voter knows which candidate those are for.)
As I understand the process, each ballot is looked at by a theoretically nonpartisan election judge, who determines whether the ballot shows clear intent, and if so, for whom. For the vast majority of the ballots, the election judge will agree with the scanning machine, but for a few, the machine and judge will disagree (usually because the machine couldn’t tell what was going on and recorded it as no vote, but the human can). Because of these ballots where the judge and machine disagree, the results of the recount, even without challenges, would not be expected to match the initial count.
In addition, to keep the nonpartisan judges honest, the candidates each have representatives at each of the precincts. They can look at any ballots they want, and decide whether the nonpartisan judge made the right decision. If they disagree with the judge, they can issue a challenge, which will be reviewed by a panel at a later date.
Since the judge is nonpartisan, and the candidates’ representatives have an admitted bias, in cases where they disagree the judge is much more likely to be correct (where “correct” is defined as “agreeing with the decision the nonpartisan panel will make”). So it’s expected that the vast majority of challenges will be overturned, and the election judge’s decision will be final. Therefore, if we assume that all challenges will be overturned, we have an approximation to the results. This is the standard that Franken’s campaign is using to claim a slight lead.
EDIT: Or take t-bonham’s word for it.
Thanks, t-bonham, and Chronos, for taking the time to spell the process out. I have a much better idea of how the process is going now.
Yes, definitely. A very interesting account.
So has this been confirmed or refuted? I haven’t heard anything about it in the news – everybody’s still writing articles about the missing 133 ballots.
It’s fitting that Franklin is a comedian. Only a comedian would make the ludicrous claim that he is leading when he plainly isn’t (unless, of course, you use the Bizarro arithmetic of the Democrats).
Both sides should STFU, let the recounting process take its due course and accept whatever result it gives with grace and dignity.
So the challenged ballots are Democratic Bizarro arithmetic?
You mean like 5 - 4 = Fuck Florida?
Of course they are, for the simple reason that until it’s been decided otherwise they remain as originally tallied.