Al Franken
gregladen | January 1, 2009The current situation is this: We are waiting for a final decision next week on the outcome of the race, and most likely this outcome will start numerically with Franken's current 49 vote lead and be adjusted by the addition of several hundred absentee ballots. The exact number of these ballots to consider is still being fought out.
Following the board's decision next week, probably Wednesday, one of the candidates will be declared the winner (this is the job of the canvassing board .... to declare the winner) and sent to Washington. There may well be further court fights over this, but…
gregladen | December 30, 2008The next few days will be the most interesting, potentially, in the Franken Coleman recount.
Notice that I do not use any words like "Debacle, Fiasco, Circus, Swampmire" and so on when speaking of the recount. This is because this is a democratic (as in America! The Greatest Democracy in the World Love it or Leave It" and all that democratic) process and I am a patriot and I refuse to malign our great nation and its constitutional government. The simple truth is that an election is a kind of adversarial process and when a recount is mandated by the processes, the adversarial parts keep…
gregladen | December 23, 2008Most of the work related to the ongoing recount in the Minnesota Senate race ended week when the canvassing board went through almost all of the challenged ballots, assigning them to either Franken, Coleman, or "other." Many ballot challenges issued earlier by one campaign or the other were withdrawn but for clerical reasons could not be considered yet. In this way, the week ended with Franken ahead by over 250 votes.
The challenged-then-withdrawn ballots have been re-entered into the count unofficially, and the canvassing board will verify those data today and adjust the count…
gregladen | December 21, 2008"Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed," ... [my opponent could opt to waive the recount.]
"It's up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct," He said, telling reporters he would "step back" if he were in [his opponent's] position...
Oh. No, wait, sorry. I got that backwards. The above quote was Norm Coleman telling us that Al Franken should bow out of the senate race back when Coleman was ahead by between 200 and 300 points, and prior to the legally mandated recount. Now that the recount is virtually over and it is Franken ahead by between 200 and 300…
gregladen | December 21, 2008"Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed," ... [my opponent could opt to waive the recount.]
"It's up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct," He said, telling reporters he would "step back" if he were in [his opponent's] position...
Oh. No, wait, sorry. I got that backwards. The above quote was Norm Coleman telling us that Al Franken should bow out of the senate race back when Coleman was ahead by between 200 and 300 points, and prior to the legally mandated recount. Now that the recount is virtually over and it is Franken ahead by between 200 and 300…
gregladen | December 21, 2008"Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed," ... [my opponent could opt to waive the recount.]
"It's up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct," He said, telling reporters he would "step back" if he were in [his opponent's] position...
Oh. No, wait, sorry. I got that backwards. The above quote was Norm Coleman telling us that Al Franken should bow out of the senate race back when Coleman was ahead by between 200 and 300 points, and prior to the legally mandated recount. Now that the recount is virtually over and it is Franken ahead by between 200 and 300…
gregladen | December 19, 2008Update: Franken is ahead by 249 votes !!!
UPDATE: DONE with the Franken re-entered (some withdrawn) ... now looking at some ballots that were set aside earlier.
UPDATE: ... bam... the canvassing board just threw out consideration of all the duplicate ballots except seven that have some reasonable 'on the face' cases.
UPDATE: The small number of duplicate issue but addressable "on the face" is done.
UPDATE: They are now going through miscellaneous challenges, of which I don't think there are too many. I think for various reasons that this is going to be mainly reductions in Franken's…
gregladen | December 18, 2008Right now, the best estimate for the difference between Franken and Coleman in the Minnesota Senate Race Recount is between about two and five votes (Coleman leading). The challenges that are currently underway and that will be finished tomorrow come hell or high water will shift that mainly towards Franken. It is quite likely that Franken will be ahead at the end of the day based on challenged ballots.
However, another important part of this recount is the consideration of absentee ballots that seem to have been improperly rejected. Team Franken wants them looked at because Al Franken is…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Think back to Florida eight years ago. There is a reasonable argument that Al Gore was duly voted, even via the electoral college, to be President of the United States, but George W. Bush was placed in that office for one and only one reason: The recount process in Florida was transformed into a circus, and the mainstream press in the United States whipped large parts of the populous and many involved in the process into a panic. The delay in determining the winner was going to damage democracy. The free world could not survive any more waiting. It did not matter that the guy running…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Moments ago, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board has completed the review of several hundred challenges produced during the process of recounting the November 5th ballots in the US Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. The next stage will be to review the Coleman challenges, of which there are approximately double the number as Franken challenges. While it is possible that the Canvassing board will begin looking at Coleman challenges today, word has it that they are going to knock off a half hour early after a brief discussion of some other issues. The original plan to finish…
gregladen | December 16, 2008)Updated) According to several different sources of information, it appears that when the challenged ballots are figured into the current Minnesota Senate Seat Recount, Candidate Al Franken will move ahead of incumbent Senator Norm Coleman by somewhere between eight and twelve votes. This is significantly different than I had expected. I had predicted that Franken would move ahead by one vote because, well, that would be really funny.
Both sides of the race have withdrawn the vast majority of challenged ballots. Secretary of state Ritchie delayed the start of the canvassing board's meeting…
gregladen | December 12, 2008
"The actions today by the Canvassing Board can only be described as confusing to us."
Coleman's chief lawyer, Fritz Knaak, has filed papers to stop 133 votes in a Franken-leaning section of Minneapolis ... mainly college students ... from being counted. Why? Because he is too stupid to understand the not so complicated situation...
"While advocates for the Franken Campaign stood outside with signs reminiscent of Florida in 2000, what we now have before us is a situation in which there now exist essentially, more than 87 different standards for how ballots will be included in the so-…
gregladen | December 12, 2008Something very interesting just happened in Minnesota.
You know about the recount, and you know that today the canvassing board is deciding what to do about a number of possibly improperly rejected absentee ballots.
At least 630, and possibly as many as 1,500, absentee ballots have been improperly rejected in the Minnesota Senate race. If they are included in the recount to determine if Al Franken or Norm Coleman should be senator, there is a pretty good chance that these will favor Franken. I would estimate that the consideration of Absentee ballots could shift the numbers by between 80…
gregladen | December 12, 2008Next week, probably over a four day period, the ad hoc State Canvassing Board will go through all the recount data and look at the 3-4 thousand contested ballots and come up with a final number in this very close Minnesota senate race. But today they are expected to make a couple of decisions that may have an even larger effect on the outcome.
One of the most important decisions they will make today is what to do about the 133 ballots that are "missing" (read: a Coleman supporter hid somewhere, most likely) in one Minneapolis district. Without these votes in a Franken-supporting area,…
gregladen | December 11, 2008On the eve of a key State Canvassing Board meeting on the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Al Franken presented affidavits today from 62 Minnesotans who said their absentee ballots were improperly rejected.
With Franken behind in the official Senate recount, the affidavits were the latest attempt by the campaign to increase the pressure on the board to count absentee ballots that were improperly rejected. The affidavits followed the release of a web video Wednesday by the campaign that portrayed the stories of seven Minnesotans whose ballots were improperly rejected. A campaign spokesman said the…
gregladen | December 10, 2008Wait -- my headline is wrong. Coleman isn't stealing the election, and neither is Franken. Both sides are going to fight the recount battle all the way to the end, and that's the way it should be.
And the election isn't in chaos. Routine problems are being handled routinely, with one precinct still up in the air. It's just an unbelievably close election, and no one knows who will win.
What is happening, though, is that the national Republicans (Ann Coulter, Powerline, Wall Street Journal) are setting the stage for a "stolen election" claim. ...
This post is dead on. Here at GLB, we monitor…
gregladen | December 6, 2008I have a little more information and some exact numbers for you.
First, some of the numbers.
The number of votes per candidate not counting Minneapolis 3-1, which has a packet of missing votes currently being searched for:
Franken: 1,210,285
Coleman: 1,210,995
The number of votes per candidate including Minneapolis 31's results from the machine count:
Franken: 1,211,375
Coleman: 1,211,590
Regardless of anything you've heard or read, this second set of numbers is exactly how this recount started ... with Franken behind by 215 votes.
Then we have the number of votes per candidate after the…
gregladen | December 5, 2008All but one precinct has been counted (and I understand that will be done momentarily). However, there is a box (or bag or envelope) of ballots missing in Minneapolis. The Secretary of State has indicated that the recount deadline is extended to allow these missing 130 or so votes to be found and included. (Coleman's lawyer is objecting to this, naturally.) In a television interview earlier today, Richie also indicated that the state will be looking at a number of absentee ballots as well.
The current difference between Coleman and Franken is probably about 192 votes, with Coleman ahead…
gregladen | November 30, 2008An enjoyable overview of the Coleman Franken Recount process all it attends to ...
"What do we want?" Franken shouts.
"PATIENCE!" the volunteers respond.
"When do we want it?" Franken asks.
"NOW!" the crowd demands.
Here
Hat tip: Ana