| [Update: see below]
Not much excitement today in the 8th day of the Minnesota Senate recount between DFLer Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman. The ballot challenge rate hit 236 per 1%. We'll be hitting 8,000 at this rate. Because of the excessive amount of frivolous challenges and the likely lawsuit involving counting rejected absentee ballots, any attempt to gauge if Norm still leads and by how much is ludicrous. We won't know for a while. Speculation continues that the US Senate may decide this race. Considering how long it may take for the courts to deal with all the suits and countersuits, it may be January when there will be a 57-41 + Joe Lieberman split. Conservatives are freaking out over this possibility.
| MN-SEN race recount |
|---|
| Updated every evening at 8pm |
|---|
| Norm Coleman | 1100922 | 41.37% | | Al Franken | 1105030 | 41.52% | | Other | 449235 | 16.88% | | Challenged Franken ballots | 3067 | 0.12% | | Challenged Coleman ballots | 2876 | 0.11% |
This is 91.13% of votes counted out of 2,885,502 votes cast on November 4th. |
Here's the math for the challenged ballots:
- 1203 ballots challenged today.
- 5.09% of the ballots recounted today.
- 1203 divided by 5.09% = 236 challenges per 1%.
- 8.87 % left to go.
- 8.87 X 236 = 2096 more challenges.
- 5943 + 2096 = 8039.
Interestingly, an email update from the Franken campaign had this to say:
In Hennepin County: there are over 74,000 ballots yet to be counted. Among the ballots yet to be counted, Al Franken got 79.2% of the two-way vote on Election Day.
This is also an area where any voting mistakes where the intent is discernible is going to favor Franken. 3 out of any four mistakes where the intent is discernible are going to be votes for Al.
The Franken campaign is also concerned about missing ballots (once again from the Franken email update):
According to the Secretary of State's website - not our internal data, but the official data from the Secretary of State - there are still numerous instances where the number of recorded voters does not equal the number of ballots counted in the recount. That means ballots were counted on Election Day but not included in the recount. We have been investigating these instances as we become aware of them, and have determined that, even if you set aside disparities resulting from clerical or technical errors, as many as several hundred ballots could be missing. In Ramsey County, Saint Paul Ward 5 Precinct 8, there is a disparity of 8 votes. In Dakota County, Inver Grove Heights Precinct 4, there is a disparity of 24 votes. In Washington County, Woodbury Precinct 7, there is a disparity of 29 votes.
Update
On MPR (FM 91.1) this morning, Curtis Gilbert talked about the 1,000 challenged ballots he examined. He said that he considered 800 frivolous and that state law provided clear guidance on discerning how these voters intended to vote. The online version is different:
The Minnesota Secretary of State's office has released copies of 1,000 of the contested ballots so far, and in the vast majority of cases it's easy to tell whether the voter intended to vote for Coleman or Franken.
Minnesota state law lays out rules for determining a voter's intent, and it says if the ballot is valid and the intent is clear, then the vote counts. Minnesota Public Radio reporters used those guidelines, and examined all 1,000 ballots.
About 350 were clearly votes for Coleman. 330 were clear Franken votes. Another 100 or so wouldn't go to either candidate under state law. That left only 206 ballots where the law didn't provide clear guidance about what to do with the vote.
(MPR)
In an additional development, the Coleman campaign indicates they are willing to begin backing off some of their frivolous challenges:
A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman countered later Monday, saying the senator's campaign was "prepared to sit down with the Franken campaign to discuss how to reduce the number of frivolous ballot challenges."
(Star Tribune)
As always, Norm stayed classy:
[Coleman spokesperson Mark] Drake also said the Franken campaign seemed to be moving closer to asking the U.S. Senate to decide the ultimate outcome, and said it was another sign Franken intended to "ignore the results of the recount."
(Star Tribune)
Is it possible for Norm and his minions to just STFU and let the process play out? |
