MN Progressive Project - Recount

Mark Ritchie Video

JeffStrate — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:06:09 GMT

The Nation Magazine named Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie America's most valuable state official and Politics in Minnesota honored Mark as politician of the year.

Leah Solo, Mark's campaign manager sent out an email alert today which in part says:

"Mark Ritchie is a great leader and a great Secretary of State. But we cannot take this race for granted. We're in a race against big money and opponents willing to make baseless accusations. Some of the biggest GOP donors in the state have maxed out to our opponent, and with the new laws, we're up against corporate money.
We expect the attacks against Mark to be frequent. We expect them to be fabrications of reality. We expect them to be largely fact-free." - Leah Solo

Readers should refer their Republican friends to Mark's conversation with Tim O'Brien on the current edition of Democratic Visions. We've posted it on YouTube:

(here's the YouTube link)
Mark's segment on Democratic Visions will be broadcast as part of full half hour August show with Jim Meffert and Tarryl Clark) for another two weeks on the following cable channels.

Comcast Channel 15 in Hopkins, Minnetonka, Edina, Richfield and Eden Prairie Sundays at 9 p.m. and Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m.

Bloomington Cable Access Television Channel 16 on Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m. & 10:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 2:00 p.m.

MTN (Minneapolis) Cable Channel 17, Sundays, 7 p.m. Repeats posted might be posted on "TV Guide" at http://www.mtn.org/.

Northwest Community Television (north-northwest metro). Click to http://www.nwct.org/ for random times at NWCT schedule page.

Democratic Divisions is produced by volunteers for DFL Senate District 42 for the entire metro region.

Jeff Strate
Producer

Minnesota Majority releases "study" and Fox News declares vote fraud in 2008 MN-SEN election

The Big E — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:06:00 GMT

How bad does Al Franken's 312 vote victory over Norm Coleman in 2008 burn in conservative craws? Pretty bad. Some of them just can't seem to let it go. Since they can't do anything to Franken until 2014, the only other target is MN Sec. of State Mark Ritchie who is up for reelection this year.

Minnesota Majority, a right wing group with white supremacist flavorings, got the Republican's communications department, Fox News, to report on a "study" they concocted:

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.
That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The funny thing is, convicted felons did vote in the 2008 election. He voted for Norm.

I suppose it is a waste of my breathe to remind everyone that three MN courts all ruled unanimously that Franken got the most votes and that the election and recount were fair and square. Even Republicans like Tim Pawlenty and Norm's legal team stated that there was no vote fraud in the election.

Later, Justice Paul Anderson asked [Norm's attorney Joe] Friedberg bluntly whether he was alleging outright criminality by election officials: "Is there any evidence of any fraud, any favoritism, or anything other than the election officials in Minnesota tried to do the best job possible to apply the law?"
"Absolutely not," said Friedberg. "And there's no voter fraud, there's no election fraud."

According to MPR, the Ramsey County Attorney will prosecute 28 cases as a result of this "study." A far cry from the amount needed to invalidate Franken's victory.

Republicans will by trying to use this "study" as a cudgel with which to pummel Ritchie. Therefore, I suggest we all drop a few coins in Ritchie's campaign fund:

Donate to Mark Ritchie

One Of My Favorite Pictures

TwoPuttTommy — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:16:58 GMT

It's been a busy week, and I wanted to touch back on the Bachmann MotorMouth Overdrive FEC problems reported by Karl Bremer over at Dump Bachmann. It seems Bachmann has some serious paperwork problems with the FEC, and that's FEC problems from BEFORE she hired republiCon Ron.

The Minnesota GOPers have a longstanding tradition of running a completely FUBAR paperwork operation; for example, here's the infamous "Tostenson Memo".

And I wanted to share one FEC Filing from the MN GOP that just warms my heart:

GOPers simply have to wonder where their "donations" to the GOP go. We know at the national level, donations fund stuff like "meals" at bondage clubs. And I'm sure it warms local GOPer's hearts, too, knowing that their donations went to pay for Senator Franken's legal fees....

Franken-Coleman recount: inside scoop on how they knew they were going to win

The Big E — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:00:00 GMT

As the recount between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in the MN-SEN race moved along, Franken's lead attorney Marc Elias claimed that his candidate was winning and that the numbers would eventually prove him right. The pundits and talking heads laughed at him initially; I hoped that he wasn't just bluffing and they really had gotten as organized as I'd heard. As the numbers began to swing towards Franken taking the lead, it became apparent that the Franken campaign had done a brilliant job preparing for the recount.

This weekend, Netroots MN had a panel entitled Clicks to Votes: Integration on the Franken for Senate Campaign. I attended to learn anything more I could about what I think was an extraordinarily tech-savvy campaign. I wasn't disappointed because in addition I learned more details about how well-organized the campaign was.

The panelists were Dan Cramer of Grassroots Solutions and JD Schlough. JD was in charge of all online activities (he's now a principal at Well & Lighthouse LLC). Dan came on board the campaign as a consultant in September.
Imagine yourself as a fly on the wall in the Franken for Senate campaign office. It's about six weeks out from election night ... around the low 20s of September 2008. Stephanie Shriock, the Campaign Manager, calls a meeting with the senior staff including Dan and JD.

She explains that after almost needing a recount in the Montana Senate race in which Jon Tester defeated incumbent Conrad Burns, she didn't want to be unprepared again. Tester ended up beating Burns by just outside of the percentage that would have required an automatic recount.

You can imagine the consternation and protests. "What!?!", you can imagine someone saying, "we're going to win by larger than that ..." Dan recalled that he was among the defiant ones who didn't think this was necessary.

"I was wrong ... Oh. So. Wrong," Dan said.

I'll pick up the story again on election night. Their polling was showing that the race was going to be really close. Staff had been told to stay sober and ready for anything.

At 1:30AM it was clear that the race was heading to a recount.

Many of you can probably imagine the mindset of the campaign. Long hours, tremendous tension. A grueling campaign for which many, many people had put their lives on hold, had made enormous sacrifices was supposed to be over. Suddenly, a campaign that had begun on Valentine's Day of 2007 was going to last months and months longer.

JD was given a few hours to pull together lists of donors who were lawyers, paralegals, related to them or any connection. They needed attorneys at every recount site. They would need staff to train volunteers.

An already large campaign doubled in size in a matter of days.

They also had to figure out how to deal with the massive amount of data they'd be processing. They would track the election judges original decision. The original assessment of 150 attorneys and volunteers morphed into first 300 then 500 then 800 then 1000. Two or three thousand people ended up working or volunteering for this effort. They established a "pony express" to relay the data back from the far flung corners of the state.

And all of this in a matter of days.

Here's an interesting anectdote for all you recount geeks out there:

"You all probably recall how intense and passionate Marc Elias was, right?" Dan asked. "Well Marc paces constantly, he never stops moving. We actually had to ban him from the data room. He'd stop in every 5 seconds to ask where are we at now?"

So ... you might be asking yourself at this point (or maybe not) ... how were they able to have all this data at the tips of their fingers?

Long-tail nanotargeting is the answer.

They knew that Al Franken had very high name recognition and many hurdles to overcome. High negatives, an entrenched incumbent, few undecided voters and an Obama Deficit were a few of the challenges.

The Obama Deficit was the voters who said they were supporting Obama but were either undecided for Franken or supporting another candidate. They had to find ways to target these people with messages that would persuade them.

So he's what they did:

Thanks to Democrat Al Franken's Senate campaign, we now have a proven model to move beyond [the old campaign voter targeting] strategies. We do it by tapping into the concept of the "long tail," an Internet marketing theory popular in the corporate world. It's based on the idea that the Internet audience is extremely fractured. So, instead of identifying the most universally persuasive messages and broadcasting them to a wide audience, in the long-tail model you take the most persuasive messages and nanotarget each one to the right niche.
People don't go to one place, looking for one thing. Their whims take them to a million places. The trick is to be everywhere, with tightly targeted messages. It's about showing them highly relevant factoids/ads tailored to the whim they're currently indulging, which if clicked, will redirect them to a relevant part of your website or related off-site content. In short, long-tail nanotargeting takes those little gems-be it an endorsement, video, news story, or ask-and shows it to the people who would care. To this end, we ran more than 30 million impressions for the Franken campaign across five horizontal ad networks, two vertical networks and dozens of local news outlets.
We nanotargeted more than 125 niche groups, with more than 1,000 pieces of creative, for less than $100,000. On Google alone, an acquisition budget of less than $20,000 got us more than 20,000 clicks, 5,500 active e-mail sign- ups, and more than 2,500 donors. We were able to reach persuasion niches (this is akin to someone opening up and reading a mail piece) for a fraction of a penny per impression, and less than 50 cents per interaction.

They targeted geographic and demographic niches online. They tested messages to see what worked best. Here's an example:

In real terms, Minnesotans who were searching for cheap gas or researching fuel-efficient cars saw ads about Franken's plan to lower gas prices.

They worked on every conceivable niche group with online ads tracking what worked and what didn't. What ads convinced viewers to click on them and view the message from the campaign. What messages from the campaign convinced viewers to donate and/or volunteer.

They tracked every kind of piece of information they could about the voters with whom they interacted.

And this is how in just a few days they pulled together a massive recount team of attorneys, newly hired staffers and volunteeers. They had the people power and the foresight but it was all made possible by how they tracked voter data from the start of the campaign.

Mud Soup

The Big E — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Fresh soup tonight. I won't forget to serve it to you hot. Woo.

Dave Mindeman reads Miss Hairdo so you don't have to.

Liberal in the Land of Conservative: Marty Seifert answers questions about the Laura Brod smears.

Aaron Brown has some news about the company trying to build the biggest boondoggle on the Iron Range. They're changing their name. Aaron also has some not helpful news about Tom Bakk helping promote this boondoggle.

More about NPR looking really bad.

Winerev's final post, his 157th, on the MN Senate recount/election contest/appeal. Wow. I'm still amazed by his herculean effort.

Arizona State Senator claims the earth is 6,000 years old.

Karl Rove was deposed for 8.5 hours over US Attorney firing scandal.

Franken to be sworn in at 11:15

Joe Bodell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:21:57 GMT

As of 11:15 AM CDT, Minnesota will have two U.S. Senators and America will have a hundred. C-SPAN2 will have video after the fact; The Uptake will have live coverage -- we're working on collecting the embed code so you can watch the proceedings.

Al Franken's victory speech

The Big E — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:41:24 GMT

Al Franken stood in front of his house in Minneapolis alongside his wife Franni and declared victory for a second time.

"I'm thrilled and honored and humbled by the enormity of this responsibility," said Senator-Elect Franken. "Earlier today I received a very gracious call from former Senator Norm Coleman. We talked about how it's been a very hard fought race. I said that it couldn't have been closer. He told me this will be the best job that I've ever had."

Al speculated that he'd be flying to Washington, DC early next week to be sworn in. This will probably actually happen as MN Governor Tim Pawlenty stated between the Norm and Al press conferences that he will sign the election certificate later tonight.

"As the whole nation watched, we've seen the most transparent, thorough election," he said. He complimented the election officials who made it all possible.

Al said that he'd be sitting on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee as well as Judiciary, Indian Affairs and Aging. He said he specifically asked for Indian Affairs and commented that Aging would mesh well with the Health and Labor Committee assignment.

Al has been traveling back and forth from Washington, DC during the lengthy recount, trial and while awaiting a ruling from the MN Supreme Court.

"I've pretty well staffed up in DC and here in MN," he said. "I guess I hope to hit the ground trotting.

He noted that there is a huge difference between getting briefings on what's going on and actually being there.

He also warned that his role as the 60th Senator isn't all that significant because of all the Democrats who often vote with the Republicans. "I consider myself the second Senator for Minnesota."

Congratulations, Al!

It's over: Coleman concedes!

Joe Bodell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:11:08 GMT

UPDATED! With pictures

Almost eight months after election day, the U.S. Senate race is finally coming to a close. Saying that the Minnesota Supreme Court was "the only court who fully considered" his case, Norm Coleman has conceded and is recognizing his Democratic opponent, Al Franken, as the winner and Senator-elect.

Norm met the press with his daughter at his side. No signs of Laurie or his son.

More after the break.
We won't have Norm's enormous teeth to make fun of anymore.

The press gaggle.

MN Supreme Court rules: Franken won, is entitled to election certificate

Joe Bodell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:19:38 GMT

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled: DFLer Al Franken beat Norm Coleman last year fair and square, and is eligible for an election certificate that will allow him to be seated in the United States Senate.

You can read the decision here.

Unfortunately, the decision does not explicitly order Gov. Tim Pawlenty to issue that certificate, so here's to hoping he won't see fit to play more dirty partisan games with Minnesota's second Senate seat.

Time for Senator Franken to get to work.

Here's the abstract of the ruling -- that "per curium" at the bottom means "unanimously" ....

SPECIAL RELEASE OPINION FILED JUNE 30, 2009
A09-697
In the Matter of the Contest of the General Election held on November 4, 2008, for the purpose of electing a United States Senator from the State of Minnesota, Cullen Sheehan and Norm Coleman, contestants, Appellants vs. Al Franken, contestee, Respondent. Ramsey County.
1. Appellants did not establish that, by requiring proof that statutory absentee voting standards were satisfied before counting a rejected absentee ballot, the trial court's decision constituted a post-election change in standards that violates substantive due process.
2. Appellants did not prove that either the trial court or local election officials violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
3. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it excluded additional evidence.
4. Inspection of ballots under Minn. Stat. § 209.06 (2008) is available only on a showing that the requesting party cannot properly be prepared for trial without an inspection. Because appellants made no such showing here, the trial court did not err in denying inspection.
5. The trial court did not err when it included in the final election tally the election day returns of a precinct in which some ballots were lost before the manual recount.
Affirmed. Per Curiam.
Took no part, Chief Justice Eric J. Magnuson and Justice G. Barry Anderson.

Update: Norm Coleman is scheduled to speak at his home in St. Paul at 3 PM. Al Franken is scheduled to speak at his home in Minneapolis at 3:30 PM. Does this mean a concession is coming from Coleman?

Does it also mean reporters are going to be driving at extremely dangerous speeds on I-94 westbound at 3:25?

Update 2: Franken has moved his appearance to 4:15. Rumors that it was to prevent multiple fatalities on 94 westbound could not be confirmed or refuted.

Update 3: According to a legal eagle of a reader, "per curiam" is a political move on the court's part. It is designed to shield the court, but does not necessarily mean that the decision was unanimous. It does, however, mean that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court will be extremely difficult for Team Coleman, since there are no dissenting opinions to use.

Pawlenty's big weekend

The Big E — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:32:03 GMT

Minnesota's lame-duck Governor and 2012 Presidential candidate wannabe Tim Pawlenty had a big weekend. He spent the weekend making appearances to further his presidential ambitions. First up was a fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas. Next was a CNN interview.

We can pull two important points from the interview. First he claims he'll sign the election certificate if the MN Supreme Court issues it. Second, he criticized the climate change bill that just passed the House. This criticism is a bit of a flip-flop.

I'll begin with Arkansas. If only he would work this hard to accomplish anything for MN ... it all began during the flight down:

But his jet was held at Memphis with mechanical problems, canceling the next leg to Little Rock. That's where "Minnesota Nice" met "Arkansas Traveler." Rick Crawford, who is running for Congress against long-time Democrat Rep. Marion Berry, drove to Memphis to pick up the governor. But a traffic jam caused another delay. By the time Pawlenty got to Little Rock, there wasn't time for him to hit his hotel before attending the dinner. "He never once complained or was critical," said an Arkansas GOP insider who worked for Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. "The only thing I could think of was he got a crash course on going with the flow on the campaign trail if he decides to run. He had to go from Plan A to Plan B in the span of a couple of hours." Pawlenty flew without any staff. "He was low maintenance and easygoing. He wasn't too worked up over things he has no control over," said the insider.
(Washington Whispers)

Seriously, this sounds like "Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It's just too bad that he isn't this dedicated when it comes to going the extra mile for his state.

Climate change was a topic for Gubnah Timmeh on a CNN interview (I assume this is the same interview in which he commented about the election certificate). He flip-flopped on his support of climate change.

This flipper floppery is a behavior pattern throughout his political career.

He'll say different things to different groups. In rural areas he talks about helping counties and non-metro cities, about helping farmers. In front of conservatives in the metro area he'll talk about starving the beast and shrinking government. In January he'll talk about bipartisanship and doing what's best for Minnesota. In April and May he protects his no-new-taxes pledge and refuses to negotiate.

So now that the national conservatives are calling the new climate bill...

"pile of ****," John Boehner.

"So it started on the wrong path and now it's just turned into, you know, it's laws and sausages at its worst in my view," John McCain.

"Treasonous," Glenn Beck.

... how can Pawlenty convince the Republican base he's their man, if he doesn't flip flop? Seen in this light, it's obvious why he can no longer support the climate change solutions he did in the past.

Remember, everything he does is about his presidential ambitions.

Pawlenty also re-affirmed he'd sign Al Franken's election certificate if the MN Supremes tell him.

However, considering Pawlenty's predilection for saying one thing then doing another, I'll believe it when the ink has dried on Senator Franken's election certificate.

Will MN Supremes rule on Minnesota Senate race soon?

The Big E — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:00:00 GMT

I know that we've all been throwing the bones, checking the tea leaves and consulting fortune tellers to try and figure out when the Minnesota Supreme Court will get around to ruling on Norm Coleman's appeal of Al Franken's victory in the MN-SEN recount. We've had enough of the waiting already.

But here's something interesting.

An attorney I know told me that the MNSC isn't supposed to consider any other cases except the MN-SEN case. This attorney suggested I check out the MNSC website. Look at what I found.

OPINIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT
FILED THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009
NOTICE - MEDIA RELEASE TIME IS 10:00 A.M.

They released rulings on Bahr v. Boise Cascade and Oganov v. American Family Insurance as well as a dozen or so orders.

If they're ruling on other things, is this because they're done with the MN-SEN ruling? Is this because they're going to issue something today, Friday the 26th? Gosh I hope so. Then TwoPuttTommy and I will have an supercalifragilisticexpialidocious time guest hosting the Mark Heaney Show on AM950 later today (6-7pm ... nudge nudge, wink wink).

If not ... them Justices got some explainin' to do. I'm seriously going out of my mind waiting. Already.

Norm gets $1M from NRSC, Al getz bupkis from DSCC?

The Big E — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:35:42 GMT

I went to the Al Franken fundraiser tonight at Solera. It was special because a friend of mine, Carla, organized this fundraiser. Her first for Al. I'm proud to say I helped get her involved in politics. Congrats, Carla.

Anyhoo, that's not why I'm writing this post. I didn't notice something about a certain press release about Norm Coleman. No, not that. I did notice that Norm got $1 million from the NRSC in May. It's this bit:

The DSCC hasn't handled Minnesota Senate funds in the same way, so its report shows only about $5,000 in payments for the race.
(St. Paul Pioneer Press)

Whoa! $5K!?! I thought getting a 60th Senator in the Democratic caucus was important. WTF?

Just to be fair, they did send some cash Al's way.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $282,500 in May for the Minnesota fight.The DSCC doesn't have as many big-dollar donations earmarked for Minnesota - the largest single contribution is $15,000 from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political action committee - but they include contributions from some bold-faced Hollywood names.

C'mon, DSCC. Howz bout sending a wee bit more scratch Al's way?

Rats flee sinking ship

The Big E — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:31:19 GMT

While we all waited in breatheless anticipation last Thursday ... or at least with as much breathless anticipation as we could muster, the Minnesota Supreme Court failed to issue a ruling in the MN Senate race.

But something more telling may have happened. Did the rats abandon the sinking ship?

LeRoy Coleman (no relation), who served as Coleman's Senate communications director, has now joined the Republican National Committee as director of media affairs. And two weeks ago another top Coleman staffer, campaign manager Cullen Sheehan, became an RNC regional director.
The fact that Sheehan signed up for a new job is pretty telling, even though he'll still be helping out with the Coleman camp. The reason is that Sheehan is the official co-plaintiff, along with Coleman, in the actual ongoing election lawsuit.
(Talking Points Memo)

Senate race saga could end tomorrow

Joe Bodell — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:30:52 GMT

So says Politics in Minnesota:

PIM has now heard from two sources on different sides of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race recount scene that the final Minnesota Supreme Court ruling is expected to arrive tomorrow, Thursday, June 18th.
...
At this point we now believe it is "highly likely" to happen; in fact, based on our sources we'd be surprised if it doesn't. While earlier estimates of 30 days of deliberation got floated, we also heard from someone close to the justices that they would like to move things along quickly, so it's more plausible that things are getting tied up today.
We also heard there's some confidence that the three-judge panel ruling was pretty solid and won't get eviscerated by the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Emphasis added on that last part. Norm Coleman's only real hope was that the Supremes would find something hopelessly wrong with the three-judge panel's ruling and toss it, turning the case on its head. If that doesn't happen, this thing actually could be over in the next 24 hours.

Recount: Pawlenty Will Sign if Directed

Grace Kelly — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:58:55 GMT

I have been trying to find a definitive statement of Tim Pawlenty talking about what he is going to do when the MN Supreme Court rules on the Franken Coleman recount. In a recent interview, Governor Pawlenty seems to have made a commitment.

When the Minnesota Supreme Court finally rules and if they direct me to sign that certificate. I am going to follow the direction of the court.
(CBS Washington Unplugged)

Note that there is a direction step involved, which means an extra legal step.