[QUOTE=Coleman has, naturally, asked that Franken just accept things as is. Franken, naturally, is not going to do that.[/QUOTE]
Fargin yeah. I’d think even James Lileks would be for a recount. And yeah, .04% is definitely recount territory. I’m sure the taxpayers can carry that weight. :b
What about the votes for the third-party candidate? Wouldn’t you have to account for them somehow in case some of them were meant for Franken or Coleman but the machine read them wrong?
There are some people in government who feel the law is a serious impediment to getting their job done.
It is mandatory however if Franken would just concede at this point then no recount would happen.
Coleman is suggesting he do this in the “name of saving taxpayer money”. A recount will cost the state something like $90K.
If Coleman was really that concerned about $90K he would concede himself but we know that ain’t gonna happen.
I heard on MPR a few minutes ago Franken is now only 300 or so votes behind.
342 according to this article. Wednesday morning it was more like 700.
IMO, damn right he should get a recount. Whether you like Franken or not (I do, but that’s beside the point), people put a lot of time, energy, and money into his campaign—they deserve a recount.
And with that lead cut to half already, it makes me wonder. Who’s voting, who’s not allowed to vote, are they counting the absentee votes, etc.? In a close race, that can make all the difference.
After the Florida snafu with Bush/Gore, I think the_least_election_officials_can_do_is_get_the_count_right. Whether Franken wins on a recount or not is beside the point.
Norm’s lead is now 336.
I wonder when provisional ballots come into this.
*Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s lead over Democrat Al Franken grew to 590 votes late Thursday afternoon. That was up from 342 votes early in the day on Thursday.
With nearly 2.9 million ballots cast, that’s a difference between the top two candidates of about one one-hundredth of a percentage point.
The unofficial returns are being revised as election officials double-check their figures. John Aiken, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said one of the differences Thursday was due to a correction from Pine County, where a township discovered it had misreported Franken’s 124 votes as just 24.*
[underlining mine] DOH!
Another point they made on the news last night is that since the recount is done by hand it will find ballots that the machines didn’t read.
Minnesota uses a ballot that has the voter fill in circles for their picks with a black pen (like an SAT test) and then feeds the ballot into a machine. If someone simply circled the circle, put an X on the circle, or circled the candidates name the machines wouldn’t have counted it. These will get included in the hand count if the voters intent is agreed upon.
Wardere, BTW, apparently was offering his services as a translator between English and Somali. There’s a statistically significant number of Somali-Americans in Minnesota?!
I guess so…:eek:
When the difference is 300 or so, every group will have an impact.
The Minneapolis Foundation reports that the four largest immigrant groups in the state are Somalis, Russian, Mexican, and Laotian (Hmong). They estimate that more than 15,000 Somalians now live in Minnesota, the largest Somalian population in the U.S.
The freak show continues…
http://news.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=16&a=369895
*BUHL, Minn. – Elections and campaign officials waited and waited into Wednesday for a final tally of votes in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race.
In northeastern Minnesota, the town of Buhl’s ballots had been cast but not counted in statewide totals. It turns out election officials there counted the votes but never called them in.
<snip>
Coleman received 152 votes in Buhl and Franken got 343, for a difference of 191 in the Democratic candidate’s favor. Not enough to change the results, but enough to tighten the contest even more. *
Between that and Pine County shorting him 100 votes, that’s 291. Throw in the Somali “translator,” and who knows?
Whether Franken wins or loses, holy shit!
I think it’s odd, though perhaps my memory is fooling me, but it seems like that recounts always narrow the margin but never widen it. Why is that?
Has there been a closer Senate race in modern history?
“Landslide Lyndon” won (and I use the word advisedly…) his election to the US Senate by 87 votes. Well, yeah, its pretty dicey. Well, yeah, he stole it. Forget it, Jake, its Amarillo.
(If you’re feeling citey, google “Landslide Lyndon”. Texas politics is not for the meek, nor is its history for the easily shocked.)
Franken down 236 now. Think Coleman will keep his word if Franken is winning after the initial count?
Thursday, Franken gained a hundred votes all because an election official in Pine County didn’t put a “one” in their vote tally when sending it to the Secretary of State’s website. Those are the kind of errors that recounts are meant to correct, and recent history shows those recounts in Minnesota do change elections.
In 2006, in the race for St. Louis county attorney, election night results showed incumbent Allen Mitchell with just 53 more votes than his opponent Melanie Ford.
The recount found a number of discrepancies. One probably involved election judges in the city of Tower putting votes in the wrong column. On election night, they recorded Mitchell as having 113 votes, and Ford as having 94. Per recount, the numbers were exactly the opposite.
When the recount was finished, it was Ford who won the election. The recount found a swing of 141 votes that the St. Louis County Auditor attributes to simple mistakes.
<snip>
There was also a state Senate recount in 2002 in the 27th district that includes Austin, Minn.
In that race, the final recount actually took votes away from State Senator Dan Sparks, but did not change the outcome. He still ended up winning, but by just 7 votes.
Do you guys think Minnesota should go to a Georgia style run off and just revote?
It scares me whenever vote counts change when they count them again.