Mmph . . . must . . . resist . . . not . . . Pit . . . must . . . resist . . .
This is technically true, but not the issue at hand.
Coleman’s beef isn’t that the canvasing board and the election contest judges counted fishy ballots. Exactly the opposite actually. He’s claiming they maintained a much higher standard for counting the ballots presented to them.
The problem is that they claim there are some fishy absentee ballots already included as part of the recount process. There is no ‘proof’ of this, only witnesses and anecdotes, because once a ballot is counted, it can’t be traced back to a particular envelope, on account of protecting anonymity.
In the Election Contest, the judges acknowledged this, but ruled that this basically just a result of a deficiency of resources in some precincts. They simply didn’t have the manpower to maintain the higher standard.
Where the Equal Protection claim comes in, is that a questionable ballot is more likely to counted in the dense, poor district. And if you believe the party stereo types (Sparse, rich districts vote for Republicans and Dense, poor districts vote for Democrats), then a questionable Democratic vote is more likely to be counted than a questionable Republican vote, even when the voters in question have everything else in common.
I’m not sure I buy the claim, but it’s an interesting conundrum.
I think Eric Black summarizes the issue well in his MinnPost column:
The 3 Judge Panel rejected Coleman’s complaint essentially on the grounds that all elections have these kinds of variations, and that the process cannot be perfected, that no intentional fraud or malice was shown, and that while ballots counted in error (which are mostly theoretical and can’t be quantified) cannot be uncounted, Coleman’s requested remedy (counting MORE illegitimate ballots) which not make the count more legitimate but LESS so (hence the comparison to counting all votes of felons if one gets counted accidentally).
Coleman’s other requested remedy, a new election, has no basis in Minnesota law, and could not bring any more perfect results in uniform standards anyway (plus Coleman knows he would get his ass handed to him in a revote, so it’s not really an ingenuous request).
In summary, no election can insure perfectly uniform standards. Coleman has not shown any fraud, and has not offered a remedy which would bring perfection to the results, he only wants to INCREASE the imperfection enough to benefit himself.
No uniform standard will ever apply unless you get one perfect, tireless person to count all the ballots personally.
Well I don’t really have the time to go through all the ballots here but on this site here:
Ballot#3 “The X-Factor” was challenged by Franken. I don’t see any reason for it to be challenged other than Franken’s campaign trying to get rid of a Coleman vote.
Ballot #8 “The Dot” was challenged by the Coleman team. What a crock…I think Franken should get that vote.
More ridiculos examples are available demonstrating both sides questionable morales.
The whole process has been flawed. Both sides challenged ballots for good reasons, and also FISHY reasons. Both sides did their best to knock votes off of each others tallly due to technicalities. Both sides are…“cheating” I think, but in a sneaky kind of way. Like a crooked criminal lawyer “bending” the rules a bit to get a client off.
I haven’t quite puzzled out who is slimier…only for certain is that one side will be most certainly luckier.
Yes, both sides made frivolous CHALLENGES, but your insinuation was that the canvassing board went along with any of them. They didn’t.
Neither side is “cheating.” Coleman is doing his best to stall the process (the basketball timeout anaolgy was apt), but even he isn’t doing anything that could be called cheating.
Arlen Specter just announced he switching to the Democratic Party, meaning Franken will be the 60th Dem when he is seated.
But if the commission didn’t accept the challenge it was thrown out. Challenging wasn’t enough to get the ballot counted. And the commission was very fair in their review - as fair as people can be.
There were a lot of ‘games’ played - by both sides. Neither one wanted the other to go in with an upper hand. And both sides had a number of advocates working for them in the recount process - which leads to a lot of inconsistancy - and I’m sure some of the advocates were more partisan or wanted to push harder than others.
And it really isn’t a matter of luck. Because of the types of ballots that require hand counting are more likely to belong to disadvantaged voters or be absentee ballots, and those voters are more likely to vote Democratic - Coleman was lost the moment it went into recount. Had Franken been 100 votes ahead, his lead would have expanded in recount.
Luck is what Minnesota has done with a tied election in the past - flip a coin.
Which means that much more Frankenstalling will follow in Minnesota. If it’s possible for that process to be dragged out any further, that is.
The pressure from the national party on Coleman and Pawlenty to drag this thing out past the SC should be hitting 100psi any minute now.
With the Specter defection? Oh, yeah. Coleman will take this to the United Nations…
He’ll take it to the Federation of Planets if he has to. Of course, there might have to call for a temporary stay of cert until earth develops FTL technology. Should only take 400, maybe 500 years.
The reason that one was challenged is clear if you look at the picture closely (or even clearer if you looked at the whole ballot). That voter carefully filled in the ovals for all the other items on the ballot, only the vote for Coleman had that big X written over it. (In the portion of the ballot shown, you can see one other vote off in the left column.) So Franken can make an argument that this voter wanted to cross off their vote for Coleman. (The voter should have asked for a new ballot, to replace the spoiled one, but many people don’t do this.)
I personally challenged some ballots like this, but did not challenge them where for every office the voter had filled in the ovals with a big X like that. (Probably, the voter had originally put an X in each one, then the machine rejected it, and a poll worker told them that they had to fill in the ovals completely. Fairly common among older voters, who remember when we voted with an X in a box.)
Also, these were the initial challenges, made by a whole bunch of semi-trained volunteers all across the state. The basic instruction to them was ‘if there is any question about the vote, challenge it – all challenges will be reviewed later by the campaign attorneys.’ Many of the challenges were actually withdrawn by the Franken campaign.
And after the first day before the Canvassing Board, it was clear how they were going to rule on various types of markings, and the Franken campaign withdrew the challenges on about 4,000 ballots. Coleman’s campaign also withdrew a bunch of their challenges. So many of these “frivolous” challenges trumpeted by the news media did not actually get challenged before the Canvassing Board.
I suppose it’s possible that when this is all over and done, Franken will still wind up with seniority on the class of 2010. But I’m not betting on it.
Eh, Franken’s still got nothing on Reed Smoot…elected in 1902, wasn’t able to take his seat until 1907.
So, when Franken does actually get seated, Arlen Spector will have been a Dem Senator longer. Makes perfect sense.
And at long last, the Coleman campaign goes from splitting hairs and examining pencil marks to splitting neutrinos and examining tachyons. Intriguing.
Coleman’s latest objection is that the court changed the outcome of the election by observing it.
A Schroedinger’s election?
Does that mean we can stick Norm in a box? And leave him there?