Franken Should Win by 50

It does not look like Al Franken will lose the lead he gained Friday in the Minnesota Senate recount. Franken's campaign recount attorney has consistantly used the same criteria for judging the ballots, and has been consistant in his message, where as Coleman's campaign has been all over the map, seizing on any bit of good news to create a positive narrative.

Currnetly Franken’s margin over Republican Norm Coleman stands at between 35 and 50 votes, and after the State Canvassing Board adds back thousands of withdrawn ballot challenges to its tally, it will likely remain the same.

The pronouncement that Franken will soon be Minnesota’s senator-elect is not just the campaign talking; it’s the campaign’s math talking. Franken’s figures always assumed that the challenged ballots would end up in the tally of the candidate for whom each one was originally called. Thus the internal count can predict the result of that work with certainty: a 35-50 vote lead for Franken.

Franken Gets More Good News

On a day when Senate hopeful Al Franken had already received two bits of good news, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on another piece of really great news:

"Franken received unexpected good news when Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann dropped a mini-bombshell [at the state canvassing board meeting], telling the board that in overwhelmingly Democratic Duluth — which has not officially tallied rejected absentees — about 40 percent of that city's 319 rejected absentee ballots were mistakenly rejected. Gelbmann said the city rejected the votes because either the voter or the witness did not date their signatures. He said he couldn't find any state law to support such a rejection."

It has not been a good 24 hours for Norm Coleman, and so his campaign is going to go to court to try and stop the count, but they face long odds because there already are standards set forth in Minnesota election law for rejecting a ballot and the Franken campaign is rightly arguing that these standards should be used and that the rejected ballots that do not meet those four standards should be counted.

Franken Campaign Gains Big Win

Today was a big day in Minnesota regarding the Franken-Coleman senate race. I have to admit that I had begun to fear that Coleman was going to pull this race out. That Minnesota was going to have a senator who in the next year would be facing Federal indictments for corruption. I have met Norm Coleman, and he is as oily as he appears. Minnesota really does not want this corrupt little man as a senator. That is why today's news is so good. Al Franken's chances of winning the Minnesota recount may have just gone up astronomically. The state canvassing board in Minnesota got together this morning to determine whether to count improperly rejected absentee ballots. For Al Franken, obviously, the goal was to have the ballots included.

The canvassing board members agreed, making the Democrat's chances of victory that much more likely. Eric Kleefeld explained that Franken's chances of winning "may have just gone up astronomically."

The state canvassing board just voted unanimously that absentee ballots that were initially rejected because of clerical errors -- and the current estimate from the hearing is that there could be nearly 1,600 of them, based on some extrapolation -- should be counted, probably the single biggest issue that the Franken campaign has been hammering ever since this recount began.

The board can't directly order the county officials to do the counting, only making a formal request to go back and count the votes and then submit amended totals. But many counties have already begun or finished the process of sorting the rejected absentees at the board's request, and board members did castigate any election officials who wouldn't do so, with some of them even leaving open the option of seeking a court order if necessary.

Because of all that, it seems very likely that the vast majority of these ballots will be counted before this is over -- and it could possibly seal the deal for Franken. Pre-election polling showed him winning the overall pool of absentee ballots by a solid margin, so it seems pretty reasonable to assume that the newly-counted votes will break for Al. If that proves to be correct, Franken will probably pull ahead of Norm Coleman and win the election.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has more on this morning's meeting. They report that the Coleman campaign is asking the state Supreme Court that the counting of rejected absentee ballots be halted until a standard procedure is established. It looks like 13 percent of the rejected absentee ballots were tossed improperly, which would mean that nearly 1,600 absentee ballots were wrongfully set aside. Consideing the margin between Coleman and Franken, that number could be huge. No wonder the Coleman campaign is working its ass off to keep these votes from being counted, even though they were tossed improperly.

At the same time the two campaigns are now challenging a combined total of 4,472 Election Day ballots that have been reviewed during the statewide recount.

Also the issue of the 133 mystery ballots was brought before the board. Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert, who reviewed the futile search for 133 missing ballots that disappeared from the Minneapolis voting office. Franken's campaign had lodged a protest over the 133 votes, while the Coleman campaign argued there was no proof the votes actually exsisted. Reichert reported to the board, "We determined definitively the ballots were missing." She said the idea that the ballots may have been fed in twice -- creating an inflated overall vote total -- is not a viable theory.

Reichert recommended that the board accept the number of votes in the precinct counted on Election Night: 2,028. Good news for the Franken campaign was that the board accepted Reichert's request. However, board member Magnuson, chief justice of the state Supreme Court, said the matter would "no doubt" be headed to court.

Now that last bit is a bit sobering. This race is nowhere near over, but after a week of bad news, Al Franken got some much needed good news today.

Minnesota: Still Up In the Air

The recount in Minnesota is still going, and it can still go either way. This is again proof that every vote matters. Today it was discovered that 171 ballots that were missed in the initial count were discovered today -- and Al Franken benefited to the tune of a not insignificant total of 37 votes:

The final day of recounting in Ramsey County in the U.S. Senate race kicked up controversy today when 171 uncounted ballots from Maplewood turned up. The
ballots apparently had been uncounted because of a ballot-counting-machine malfunction on Election Day.

Democrat Al Franken made a net gain of 37 votes from the ballots, as he got 91 of the total, to 54 for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and 26 for other candidates, including Dean Barkley of the Independence Party.

At a press conference earlier today, Franken's lawyer Marc Elias said the margin, by their count, was down to 50 votes:

Minnesota Democrat Al Franken’s lead attorney said Tuesday that his count shows the comedian trailing Sen. Norm Coleman by just 50 votes with more than 200,000
left to be counted.

Attorney Marc Elias held his press conference in Washington just hours after elections officials found nearly 200 ballots that had not been counted on election night.

We won't know who won this race for awhile. It will come down to the ballots challenged during the recount process. As of last night, Coleman had challenged 3067 ballots while Franken had challenged 2876. The five-member canvassing board will review those challenges beginning December 16th. Franken's lawyer also said today that most of the challenges wouldn't hold:

“I’m here to tell you that the vast majority of these challenges are going to be thrown out,” Elias said. “We’re confident that we’re going to gain votes when the challenges are resolved.”

The 50-vote lead of which Franken's lawyer spoke did not include the 37 new votes. That would mean the margin is down to 13 votes. We may yet see Senator Al Franken.

New from Minnesota - The recount goes on

The ever-increasing number of challenged ballots in Minnesota is making it more and more difficult to determine the extent to which Al Franken is in fact gaining, though the evidence is that he has been gaining on incumbent Norm Coleman. The Minneapolis Star Tribune (Minnesota's largest paper) says the margin is now 136 votes, but there are a lot of numbers being thrown about. The Franken campaign has made claims that the margin has dropped into double digits, and the majority of ballots left to recount are from Franken-skewing precincts in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

An analysis by FiveThirtyEight.com of precinct-by-precinct returns available on the Secretary of State's website, however, suggests that Franken's position is really good. This analysis points to the fact that in precincts where no challenges have been issued (these are the only precincts in which, in some sense, the results of the recount can be considered to be final and "official") Franken has gained a total of 34 votes, and Coleman a total of 6 votes, for a net gain by Franken of 28 votes. Moreover, in precincts where just 1 challenge has been issued, Franken has gained a net of 31 votes on Coleman, and in precincts where exactly 2 challenges have been issued, Franken has gained a net of 32 votes on Coleman. By contrast, in precincts where 5 or more ballots have been challenged between the two campaigns, Coleman has gained a net of 57 votes on Franken. Basically the more challenges there are, the longer this process will be. Because it is now apparent that Norm Colemans strategy is if they don't like a ballot, they're going to challenge it.

But are these challenges legitimate?

Here's a video from the Uptake detailing some of the ballots the Coleman campaign is claiming should count for Coleman. This falls under desperate much?

LibertyAir Blog

Al Franken, Down Just 136 Votes

In Minnesota, Norm Coleman's lead over Al Franken is down to just 136 votes. As of last night, about 46% of the 2.9 million ballots had been counted as part of the statewide recount.

Franken Down by just 204 votes

The vote count in Minnesota continues to shrink the difference between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in Minnesota's Senate race. Al Franken's deficit just keeps on shrinking as the state adjusts the unofficial tally in the U.S. Senate election last week.

Today's latest results show the DFL challenger is now trailing Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by only 204 votes. This is down from the 734 votes that divided the two on election night and the 221 difference that was reported over the weekend.

The Coleman campaign is freaking out and we can expect all kinds of drama, as we already have seen a couple of court filings both prior and after the election. The Coleman campaign has questioned the validity of changes, but Minnesota's Republican Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has responded that the revisions are typical and that no signs of fraud being committed hass surfaced.

These kinds of adjustments take place after every election, but it usually doesn't matter, because the margin of victory is just too large. It's really rare that a race is as close as this one.

The officials in Minnesota are following the law, and so far have done nothing questionable. This of course will not stop Norm Coleman and his fellow Republicans from questioning the process.

That's what they do.

Franken's deficit: 236 votes

Al Franken's deficit is down to 236 votes. Norm Coleman’s razor-thin lead over Al Franken keeps getting tighter, and Minnesota still has not started.

Yesterday, Coleman’s lead started at 477 votes, but as of 10:45 a.m. Thursday, it was a 438-vote gap, then at 4:15 pm it jumped up to a 590-vote lead, but then the margin again started to shrink and was back to 336 by 5 pm. Then at 8:45 pm, Al Franken found himself trailing by only 236 votes. One reason why the race has continued to tighten is that Election officials in Buhl, Minn., reportedly went to bed on election night without reporting the tallies for its 550 voters to county officials. Also reporting of results in Duluth was delayed because one precinct, “inundated with hundreds of same-day registrations,” took longer to count.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the Senate vote totals will continue to move as county election officials double check their work. He said the numbers will continue to fluctuate until the County Canvassing Boards certify the election. The deadline for the county boards to certify the numbers is Monday, November 10th. The counties are required to submit their election reports by November 14th to the Minnesota Secretary of State.

The State Canvassing Board will then meet on Tuesday, November 18th to certify the election. At that point, the board will order a recount which is required by state law.

Minnesota - Headed to a Recount

Al Franken has not conceded the race, and has asked for the legally required recount. Norm Coleman's opposition to a recount is pretty ridiculous. The two men are separated by less than 600 votes with 100 percent of the precincts reporting. Less than 600 votes out of out of 2.9 million votes cast, which means that the margin was less than half of a percent. Under Minnesota state law an automatic statewide canvass and recount will take place. Norm Coleman just looks stupid saying, "too much is at stake for a recount."

Norm Coleman is a corrupt individual, who will be following Senator Stevens into the Convicted list, so I am hoping the recount finds the votes needed to bring Al Franken to Washington DC.

Al Franken would be a great Senator, so hang in there Al.