I thought they were removed entirely from the recount totals, which means NOBODY knows who’s ahead in reality, though Franken’s math seems to be the most impartial way to guess at the final outcome.
The challenged ballots are not included in the totals so far. If all the challenges from both sides are rejected, it seems Franken will win by almost nothing. Coleman has more challenged ballots in the pot right now, but further withdrawals are possible. The bottom line is that Coleman’s 192 vote lead is illusory. By all accounts, most of the challenges are weak.
Then there are the 133 missing ballots and the uncounted absentee ballots…
There is no reference to any Supreme Court decision in the article you cite. Are you referring to Bush v. Gore? The court there said “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.” So that decision cannot be used as precedent in this or any other case.
I agree with you. To me it is very clear the “Lizard People” guy intended to vote for Franken. If not, he would have filled in the bubble next to “Lizard People”, as he did in the Presidential race. Instead, he filled in Franken’s bubble.
Is the voter an idiot? No doubt. But idiots’ votes are still supposed to be counted so long as the voter’s intent can be determined.
If you look at Drudge ,Coleman is winning in spite of getting screwed over at every occasion. Read a liberal site and Franken is leading in spite of the Repubs cheating. I will wait until the winner is announced. Only then will we know. To claim one side or the other is trying to win harder and dirtier than the other is a joke. Running for senate is a huge commitment. Who could just walk away now?
I have a fantasy where the election comes down to the lizard people ballot. It works it’s way up the ladder to to the supreme court where, regardless the outcome, the “lizard people” decision replaces the Scopes monkey trial as the one most likely to be remembered by high school civics students.
I haven’t heard any confirmation of it either.
The officials have said that they believe they were in that envelope erroneously marked 1-3, but I haven’t heard that they have found the envelope yet. They believe it is still somewhere in the warehouse where the voting machines are kept (and where they have been doing some of the recounting). That is a big old warehouse, with most of the floor space filled with the voting machines & auto-mark machines for blind voters, and the back half of it is filled with 20-foot high shelves full of boxes of archived city & county records & files. I can see where it could take a while to search that place!
But the fact that they have now ascertained that at one time these ballots were in that mis-marked envelope seems like progress. They should find it eventually, and the Secretary of State has given them extra time to continue looking, up to next week when the Canvassing Board starts to meet.
P.S. This same precinct is one that had problems on Election Day, with the officials there turning away students who live there, and refusing to allow them to register and vote. They claimed the documentation from their landlord was insufficient to meet residency requirements. (State Law lists a utility bill as one document to prove residency. In this large apartment complex, utilities are included with the rent, so tenants do not have separate utility bills. So the rental office prepared letters explaining this, and identifying the person as a resident of a specific apartment.) The poll workers rejected this, residents went back to the office and got new letters re-written to meet the objections, those were rejected for a different reason. The 3rd letter was finally accepted, but many residents gave up before this. See here for a news story about this.
It seems like there were significant problems with the Poll Workers in charge at this specific precinct. That has been noted, and they will be dealt with after the recount is finished.
Also, life continues: the City Elections Clerk working on this is also facing City Precinct Caucuses coming up in 87 days, starting the next election cycle. And she is under orders to implement a new voting system then, using IRV, even though our voting machines don’t support it. So they may be doing manual recounting ob ballots next November, for 25 Minneapolis City offices.
Sounds like a great place to hide an Ark of the Covenant.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
The Russkies might hear you!
Some good news for Franken, as told by Nate.
That seems a little iffy. What’s the purpose of the recount, if when it doesn’t match up, you just use the original? Doesn’t that same logic invalid any recount difference?
I’m not sure I grok exactly what happened, but it looks like since 133 ballots went missing between Election Day and the recount, the recount is invalidated and the Election Day count must be treated as the more complete and accurate one. If they had determined that the extra 133 on Election Day were ballots that had been counted twice, the recount would have held as the more accurate count. It’s not the same situation as if the recount determined that 133 ballots originally tallied for Coleman were for Franken instead.
Unfortunetly, I suppose it’s unlikely that the case would be called The People of the United States v. The Lizard People.
I, for one, welcome our new Lizard People overlords.
Um, Sinaijon, I don’t think you understand the rulings … there was nothing there that in any way meshes up with what you just said.
They have lost a number of ballots and cannot complete the recount for that precinct. They could use an incomplete recount that reasonably would be expected to have not included some balance to one or the other candidate compared to the result that would have been if those ballots were found and counted, or they can let the original number stand. Both are imperfect options and they have decided that going with the original and only complete count is the less imperfect.
The other is a bit more squishy IMHO. Sure it makes sense to review absentee ballots for possible erroneous rejections, but there is nothing in this ruling that mandates or standardizes that process. Also in the Nate link is that
and as that Coleman request stands it seems fair.
So are they using the election day count for just those 133 ballots or are they using the election day count for all the ballots from that precinct
They weren’t ABLE to recount the ballots in the 1st precinct because some of them were lost in between the 1st count and the 2nd count Since they COULDN’T recount those ballots, they had to accept the 1st certified result for that precinct. It’s not a question of the results not matching. Some of the ballots were physically lost.
For the precinct.
All the ballots from that precinct. I think it is almost certain the Coleman campaign will go to court to prevent the original count from being used.
By the way, it now looks like there are well over 1,000 wrongly rejected absentee ballots. We have no way of knowing who these ballots were cast for. It is becoming increasingly likely these ballots will be counted as the state AG has weighed in in favor of counting them and the canvassing board is asking counties to sort them out. The Coleman campaign has been fighting to prevent these ballots from being counted, but in the end they may well find themselves behind without them and that might cause them to get religion on the subject.