Home / MinnesotaRecount
Showing posts with label MinnesotaRecount. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MinnesotaRecount. Show all posts
MN Judges make decisions on Absentee ballots in Senate race

MN Judges make decisions on Absentee ballots in Senate race

The Star Tribune has this:

On its face, the ruling looked to be a victory for DFLer Al Franken, whose lawyers had urged the judges to turn down 17 of the 19 categories and said Friday that they had very nearly done it.

"We are obviously very pleased with the court's decision ... there's a large chunk of ballots that have now been taken out of play," said Franken lawyer Marc Elias.

But Coleman's attorneys saw it differently, saying that the ruling leaves untouched about 3,500 of the 4,800 rejected absentee ballots they want the court to open and count, enough to make it possible for Coleman to overcome Franken's 225-vote certified recount lead. . . .


Assume that 20 percent of the ballots go to the third party candidate. Coleman would have to pick up 54.1 percent of the remaining absentee ballots to overcome Franken's 225 vote lead.

UPDATE: I have posted on this before, but I should have made it clear here. These absentee ballots are from Republican counties. Absentee ballots tend to be even more Republican than overall voters in Republican counties.
Trial judges give big win for Norm Coleman in MN Recount

Trial judges give big win for Norm Coleman in MN Recount

This is a big win for Coleman, but it is hard to see how the court could have gone any other way given Bush v. Gore's decision that the same rules have to be applied across a state. Suppose that 4,000 of these absentee ballots are allowed and that the third party candidate gets 1,000 of those votes, Coleman only needs to get 54 percent of the remaining 3,000 ballots to fall his way for him to make up the 225 vote lead that Franken has. Given that these ballots are from Republican counties, that wouldn't seem to be too hard.

So much for Democrats wanting every vote to be counted. Here they actually fought in court to uphold differing rules on whether to count absentee ballots across the state. I would have been happy to see these ballots not be counted, but then the ones that helped Franken so much shouldn't have been counted either.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

In a ruling that keeps alive Republican Norm Coleman's chances of overturning Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, a three-judge panel on Tuesday allowed him to bring evidence to trial that as many as 4,800 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and should now be counted.

The decision expands the evidence that can be considered in the recount trial, giving Coleman the opportunity to put more ballots into play in his effort to erase a 225-vote lead for DFLer Al Franken. The Franken campaign had tried to limit Coleman to bringing evidence on only 650 absentee ballots that he cited specifically when he filed his lawsuit challenging the recount results.

In the ruling, the judges said they will focus on rejected absentee ballots cast by voters who complied with the requirements of Minnesota election law or failed to comply because of mistakes by local elections officials.

"We're very, very pleased with the ruling," said Coleman legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg, who predicted that "the vast majority" of the 4,797 ballots would be accepted and counted.

Franken chief recount lawyer Marc Elias said the ruling was "neither a loss nor a win" for his candidate. While it allows Coleman to bring evidence on more ballots than Franken preferred, it was far fewer than the 11,000 rejected ballots that Coleman's camp said in recent weeks that it wanted reconsidered. . . .
Filibuster Threatened over Franken

Filibuster Threatened over Franken

The Hill newspaper has this:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) threatened Friday to filibuster any attempt to seat Democratic Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken next week.

The newly minted National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman said he had not whipped votes in the GOP caucus, but added that he could not imagine any members defecting and seating Franken without a certificate of election.

Franken will not have that certificate as long as the election is challenged in the courts — a likely scenario, with Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) legal team already attacking the credibility of the recount process.
“This is a very, very serious matter,” Cornyn said. “I can assure you that there will be no way that people on our side of the aisle will agree to seat any senator without a valid certificate.”

Some have suggested that Franken could be seated provisionally, which would allow for any court challenges to play out and potentially change the outcome.

But since Minnesota state law won’t provide Franken a certificate of election with an election contest pending, seating Franken could be a risky and difficult proposition.

Franken leads the race by 49 votes with all challenged ballots resolved, but Coleman’s campaign is attempting to include about 650 improperly rejected absentee ballots from areas friendly to the incumbent.

That would be on top of about 1,350 improperly rejected absentees already designated by recount officials.

Beyond that, Coleman is expected to take up a legal challenge to the result.

Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge, suggested Friday that the case could go to the Minnesota Supreme Court or beyond. . . .
MN Secretary of State's Office Had Multiple mistakes in their listing of ballot decisions

MN Secretary of State's Office Had Multiple mistakes in their listing of ballot decisions

Beth Fraser, the Director of Governmental Affairs in the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State, was able to respond yesterday to my requests for information over the last couple of weeks. While I wasn't able to get any new data from them so as to compare the original decision on ballots with those decisions by the Minnesota Canvassing Board, I was told something interesting. Apparently, the SOS office had multiple mistakes in the ballot summaries that they had released. I find this interesting given the attacks on me for relying on the MN Star Tribune ballot summaries that were claimed by the SOS office to have been mistaken in one case. Among those who I had called to double check the MN Star Tribune website was the SOS office, but they did not return my requests for information. The Ms. Fraser was unwilling to identify how many mistakes the SOS office had made nor to identify what ballots had been mistakenly described. I doubt that the SOS office will be called to task as I was even though I had already corrected the supposed mistake on that one ballot (as claimed at that time by the SOS) that I had used.
More on the inconsistent rulings by the Minnesota Canvassing Board

More on the inconsistent rulings by the Minnesota Canvassing Board

Kevin Hassett has this piece over at Bloomberg:

After examining some of the ballots, I’m concerned. Although voter intent seems clear in a large majority of the ballots, in a number of instances the board’s judgments seem inconsistent in a way that favors Franken.

Inspect, for example, sample ballots posted on the Web site of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. In Minnesota, most ballots require voters to make their choices by filling in circles, like the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The darkened circles are then scanned by a counting machine.

One sample ballot shows a filled-in circle for John McCain and Sarah Palin, indicating the voter’s intent to select the Republican candidates. In the Senate race, the circle next to Norm Coleman’s names is filled in, but there is a faint X through it. This might suggest that the voter intended to cross out, or negate, the vote cast for Coleman. Or it might indicate that the voter made an extra scribble when filling in the circle. That is why the ballot was disputed. In this case, the panel ruled that the vote wasn’t for Coleman because the X indicates intent to cancel the darkened circle.

This decision is defensible. If there is an X there, then perhaps the voter didn’t intend to vote for Coleman.

Inconsistent Rulings

Consider the next ballot, though, which is almost identical except for two changes. First, the filled-in circle that is crossed out is a potential vote for Franken. Second, the X is much larger and more obvious. And what did the canvassing board decide? It is a vote for Franken.

Calling that ballot a vote for Franken is possible in isolation. But taken together, the two decisions are at odds.

This isn’t, it is important to note, evidence of wrongdoing by the board. Any group of individuals making thousands of decisions is bound to make some that are contradictory in retrospect. But at the very least, the appearances are troubling, and the decisions appear by my reading of the ballots to favor Franken. . . . .


Reminder of what I was writing last week.
MN Supreme Court will let possible Double Counted Votes be counted for now

MN Supreme Court will let possible Double Counted Votes be counted for now

From the Star Tribune:

The Minnesota Supreme Court today denied a bid by Republican Sen. Norm Coleman to force the state Canvassing Board to consider his campaign’s claim that some votes in strongholds of Democrat Al Franken were counted twice.

The court said the Coleman campaign’s challenges of ballots that it believes were double-counted are better resolved in a court hearing where evidence can be presented, rather than by the Canvassing Board.

In doing so, the court allowed those ballots to be counted, at least for now.

“We win in Supreme Court,” said the Franken campaign in a brief statement.

Coleman’s campaign did not react immediately to the ruling, which was written by Justice Alan Page.

It had argued that 130 to 150 votes, mostly in Democratic areas, may have been counted twice. . . .
The Impossibility of getting information out of the Minnesota Secretary of State

The Impossibility of getting information out of the Minnesota Secretary of State

I guess that I needed any evidence that the Minnesota Secretary of State is purely political is their unwillingness to respond to requests for information. Last week when I wanted information on the ballots before the Canvassing Board telephone calls were not returned. This week they will not respond to email or telephone requests for even a key for an excel spreadsheet that they have on their website. I have the very strong impression that they have no desire to provide information to anyone who might be critical of their actions. Yet, I have reason to believe that they work closely with liberal bloggers who are supportive of Franken.

UPDATE: I got an email from the SOS office today, but it didn't contain the information that I had asked about and they apparently had sent the email just as they were leaving their office. I sent an email that wasn't responded to and when I called they had obviously already left their office.
Angry Commentators Get the Discussion of Minnesota Ballot Recount Wrong

Angry Commentators Get the Discussion of Minnesota Ballot Recount Wrong

My piece at Fox News yesterday on the inconsistent rules for counting ballots in Minnesota's Senate race has produced a lot of reaction. Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight claims in the title of his post that my piece "blames liberal conspiracy." My piece didn't mention the words "liberal" or "conspiracy" (nor did it say that Democrats or Franken were involved in some secret conspiracy or use any similar synonyms). Nor did I say that people had made mistakes intentionally (unlike Nate, I don't claim to know what is going on in people's minds).

My point was simple: "The primary problem isn’t the rules. The real problem is the lack of consistency." Mistakes can be made simply because someone is dealing with so many ballots, but mistakes, even if they are not done on purpose, can effect the outcome of this race because it is so close. Silver doesn't address this concern at all in his write up. Instead, he focuses on the fact that the Star Tribune data base made a mistake in classifying one of the ballots and that I relied on that for one of my examples. The fact that my website had already noted this and corrected that one ballot example before his post was put up is never mentioned by Silver. He also incorrectly implied that I hadn't double checked that ballot, but he didn't make any telephone calls or check this point either. It is not surprising that he wouldn't try to check these points out before making his assertions. For those interested, you can see my original post on this website here.

Others have made similar posts. David Brauer with minnpost also focuses on the one ballot misclassified by the Star Tribune and ignores the issue of rules not being applied consistently. He also incorrectly asserts that I did not check on what the newspaper had, but, ironically, he did not bother to check and contact me before he made this claim.

Others have also latched on to me claiming conspiracy. Emily Kaiser at Citypages writes: "Will he still claim liberal conspiracy despite losing his best evidence? Of course." Again, Kaiser also repeated the claim that no additional checking had been done. Silver's claim about a conspiracy is just being repeated. Why is it so difficult to evaluate whether a mistake was made without having to declare that someone did it on purpose? Why don't these blogs look at the systematic errors made by the Canvassing Board?

The Huffington Post has gotten involved in the act and claimed that I was "Blam[ing] Liberal Conspiracy." For those interested in the sock puppet and identity theft history of those who run the Huffington Post please see this post here. The so-called "For the Sake of 'Science'" also talks about me "trying to blame a typo on a vast liberal conspiracy."

All this is actually pretty funny. One person makes a post after I have already pointed out the problem on this website. He obviously misstates what I wrote and uses terms such as "conspiracy" to inflame readers. All these other liberal bloggers repeat these claims without probably even reading what I wrote (it would be worse if they read my piece and still repeated what was in Nate Silver's post).

Again, the original posting and the correction can be seen here.

Update: The MN Secretary of State's Office has told me that they made multiple mistakes in their listing of ballot decisions. I should also point out that before I published the piece being discussed in this posting I had contacted the MN SOS office a couple of times to double check things but was unable to get any assistance from them.

New Op-ed piece at Fox News: The Minnesota Recount Bias

My previous pieces on the Minnesota Recount can be found here, here, and here. The new piece at Fox News starts this way (note some additional links are included here):



The Canvassing Board overseeing the vote recount for Minnesota’s tightly contested US Senate race isn’t quite done examining disputed ballots, but the board issued a projection Saturday night that Al Franken would pick up 270 votes when it finished examining the ballots. Currently the board is determining voter intent in disputed ballots. If the project proves correct, Franken will beat incumbent Senator Norm Coleman by 78 votes.



Vote totals have changed a lot since November 4th when Coleman lead Franken by 725 votes. Correcting typos cut Coleman’s margin to 215, and a recount by all the counties reduced it further to 192. Yet, the additional 270 votes picked up by Franken from the Canvassing Board’s decisions have been among the most controversial.



The vote pickup has occurred through two actions by the board – divining voter intent and determining what votes should be counted. While decisions to include missing or overlooked ballots has gotten the most attention, the process of determining intent has also been important in determining the outcome here.



The Canvassing Board faces a difficult task in divining voter intentions. It is very difficult to determine how a voter meant to vote simply by looking at what might be stray marks on the ballot. And whatever rules are adopted must be consistently used in evaluating all ballots. . . .


Note: There was a mistake in one ballot that I discussed in the original piece. The Star Tribune made a mistake on the ballot shown below and discussed in this link here (corrected the day after I fixed it). All the rest of the discussion is fine. I am not going to be publishing any comments that just repeat this point without them indicating that they have already read this note. For a response to some of those who have been attacking the piece, please see this.





The piece was mentioned on the Drudge Report.



My piece is the most read on the Fox News website:



Minnesota Canvassing Board's mischief?

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE STAR TRIBUNE SEEMS TO BE CHANGING THE PAGES THAT THESE LINKS GO TO. I WILL TRY TO KEEP THEM UPDATED, BUT THERE ARE TOO MANY EXAMPLES HERE FOR ME TO ENSURE THAT THE LINKS REMAIN ACCURATE.

Below is only a sample of some of the questionable calls made by the Minnesota Canvassing Board. These examples are culled from just first 99 cases, more from that group could have been included. There are a few calls in favor of Coleman that are also difficult to explain (possibly to make it harder to show bias), but at a rough glance what I have looked through so far seems to show a systematic bias by the board in favor of Franken. I am in the process of trying to go through these decisions more scientifically.

Here is an example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is clearly for no one.

Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is for no one.

Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is clearly for Franken. Question: If an "X" through the vote means no when it is for Coleman (see above two examples), why does this "X" mean yes for Franken?

Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is for no one. Apparently, an "X" when it comes to a Coleman ballot doesn't mean no in some cases.

Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is for no one.

Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is for no one. This vote is disqualified because the voter used the wrong ballot, but there are a couple things to note. I haven't found any similar cases for Franken, and it would be useful to have some discussion of how the voter got the wrong ballot.

Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is for no one. Same as previous case.


On the other hand, there are some calls that could arguably go either way that they made in Coleman's direction. Here is another example where the Minnesota Canvassing Board claims the vote is for Coleman.


Another example is here, where the decision was made in favor of Coleman.


Still overall I think that there are many more questionable decisions that go in Franken's favor than the reverse.

After consulting with the Democrat Attorney General, at first Ritchie rejects Franken’s desire to count rejected Absentee Ballots relying on the Attorney General’s opinion that such ballots are not a subject of a recount but rather for the courts to decide in an election contest. The Attorney General’s office opinion is here.

UPDATE: A couple of the examples that I originally had here were removed. They involved whether voters had made an identifying mark on their ballots. These are not always obvious to me (e.g., is the note "TO" an identifying mark?). In any case, the point distracted from the other real questions here.
More Mischief on Minnesota Recount

More Mischief on Minnesota Recount

During the recount an Election Official explained an error that resulted in Franken losing votes occurred when a precinct double counted some votes on election night. But after pressure from Democrats made the official change her story, the Mark Ritchie led Canvassing Board decided for that precinct only the recount did not count and would instead use the more favorable to Franken Election Day total.
Minnesota Senate Race Goes to Court

Minnesota Senate Race Goes to Court

Not too surprising of a result:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) The Minnesota Supreme Court is getting involved in the state's unsettled U.S. Senate race.

The court said Monday it will weigh whether to stop the sorting and counting of wrongly rejected absentee ballots until clear instructions are handed down.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman petitioned the court to step in after the state board overseeing the recount recommended those ballots be considered last week. Coleman maintains there aren't clear guidelines for the recommendation and could lead to disarray among the 87 counties.

Democrat Al Franken made a big push to include absentee ballots in the recount that were improperly set aside. Minnesota has four legal reasons for rejecting an absentee ballot, but some of the decisions on or before Election Day fell outside those reasons.

The Supreme Court asked the parties to submit arguments in writing by Tuesday in advance of a hearing the next day.
New Op-ed at Fox News: Minnesota finding 171 votes

New Op-ed at Fox News: Minnesota finding 171 votes

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

There has already been a lot of controversy in the Minnesota Senate recount, but the finding of 171 new ballots in Ramsey county has generated real concern. The Star Tribune wrote that "Ramsey County's recount problem caught many by surprise." The Star Tribune noted the new ballots were one of two pieces of good news "boosting the prospects of DFLer Al Franken" when the vote recount was looking grim for him.

Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign said it was "skeptical about [the ballots'] sudden appearance."

All the previously uncounted ballots were discovered in Maplewood Precinct 6. Of the 171 votes, 91 went to Franken, 54 to Coleman and 26 to other candidates. The new votes increased the total votes for the Senate candidates in the precinct by over 12 percent. The percentage of votes Franken got from these new votes in this precinct were statistically significantly different than the lower percentage that he obtained from the ballots that were first counted in that precinct.

When Karen Guilfoile, Maplewood’s director of city services, was asked about whether she was surprised that such a large percentage of the ballots could be over looked she told FOX News that "We are still trying to figure out what happened. We are going back and trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. Fortunately, we have a paper trail." One possible explanation is that a ballot counter that kept jamming was replaced, but the ballots were apparently not run through again after the counter had been replaced. . . .
More on Minnesota Recount

More on Minnesota Recount

If you are interested in looking at the challenged ballots, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has provided a sample of 599 ballots here. I have gone through 100 of them and I would guess that it would be lucky if 10 percent involve really difficult calls. With 5,623 challenged ballots (about equally divided between Coleman and Franken), a 10 percent rate means 562 ballots. Suppose that Coleman losses all his challenges and Franken wins all his and that the 562 are equally divided between the two sides, that would appear to be a pick up of 281 votes for Franken. Right now Coleman is up by 282 votes.

UPDATE: The Star Tribune makes a similar point in their Sunday paper:

The Star Tribune analysis showed that Franken could win the election by 26 votes by prevailing on 7 percent of his challenges of Coleman votes, provided that Coleman won none of his challenges of Franken votes.

Franken would have to climb a higher hill if Coleman were to win some of his challenges. If the incumbent won as few as 5 percent of his challenges of Franken votes, Franken would need to win more than 11 percent of his. . . .
Al Franken is threatening to go to the Courts and the Democrat Controlled Senate to Change the Results

Al Franken is threatening to go to the Courts and the Democrat Controlled Senate to Change the Results

With the recount not going in Franken's direction, he is going to try new tactics:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Minnesota's U.S. Senate showdown is veering down a path toward the courts and possibly the Senate itself after a panel's ruling on rejected absentee ballots dealt a blow to Democrat Al Franken's chances.

For the first time, his campaign on Wednesday openly discussed mounting challenges after the hand recount involving Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman concludes. That includes the possibility of drawing the Senate into the fracas.

The state Canvassing Board denied Franken's request to factor absentee ballots rejected by poll workers into the recount. He sought to overturn the exclusions in cases where ballots were invalidated over signature problems or other voter errors. Coleman's campaign maintained the board lacked power to revisit those ballots.

Franken entered the recount trailing Coleman by 215 votes out of 2.9 million ballots. As of Wednesday night, Coleman was up 292 votes, including results from Nov. 4 and recounted ones.

All told, 86 percent of the ballots have been recounted. However, about 4,740 ballots have been challenged by the two campaigns that could fall to the canvassing board to rule on.

The ruling wasn't a complete victory for Coleman. The board left open the possibility of examining ballots that were set aside for errors outside of the voter's control.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie estimated that 12,000 absentee ballots were rejected for various reasons — some legitimate, some not. That represents between 4 percent and 5 percent of all the absentee ballots cast.

Franken's campaign had made the push to factor in rejected absentee ballots key to its recount strategy, even going to court to force county officials to turn over data on voters whose ballots didn't count.

Marc Elias, the legal chief for Franken, said the campaign won't appeal the board's ruling but it could seek intervention of another kind once the recount wraps up.

"Whether it is at the county level, before the Canvassing Board, before the courts or before the United States Senate, we don't know yet. But we remain confident these votes will be counted," Elias said.

The board's decision drew a response from the Senate's top Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called it a "cause for great concern." . . .
Even more ballots misplaced in Minnesota III

Even more ballots misplaced in Minnesota III

Detroit Lakes Online has this story:

DETROIT LAKES — The math didn’t add up during the first day of the U.S. Senate recount in Becker County on Monday.
In addition to 61 ballots that weren’t counted on Election Day on Nov. 4, there were four less ballots counted from Holmesville Township during the recount than was reflected on Election Day.

“It’s a very unfortunate situation,” Becker County Auditor-Treasurer Ryan Tangen said.

He said that the ballots were overlooked and not transferred to the counting area on election night. They did arrive at the county courthouse by 8 p.m., Tangen said.
Fifty-three of the ballots came from mail-in precincts and eight were absentee ballots.

Those missing ballots, if allowed to stand, will play a huge part in a race in which 215 votes separate Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Coleman carried Becker County by 2,400 votes in the original count.

Tangen said that the advice given to him by the Becker County Attorney’s and the Minnesota Secretary of State’s offices were to count the 61 ballots. . . .
With 69 percent of votes recounted, Coleman back up to 195 vote lead in MN recount

With 69 percent of votes recounted, Coleman back up to 195 vote lead in MN recount

The numbers in the headline are as of 2:02 PM this afternoon CST. The Star Tribune has a very useful page here.

11/22 10:30 PM: 68% in. Coleman leads by 180 votes
11/22 4:00 PM: 65% in. Coleman by 147
11/22 2:00 PM: 64% in. Coleman by 133
11/21 9:30 PM: 64% in. Coleman by 120
11/21 8:30PM: 56% in. Coleman by 157
11/20 9:30PM: 46% in. Coleman by 136
11/20 8PM: 31% in. Coleman by 142
11/20 3PM: Coleman by 156
11/19 PM: 21% in. Coleman by 174


UPDATE:

11/24 9:33 PM: xx% in. Coleman by 211
11/25 8:03 PM: 82% in. Coleman by 231

Minneapolis Star Tribune runs my letter correcting their attack on my numbers

I still wish that they had run a correction, but a letter to the editor is still worth something. This letter is largely based on my piece from Fox News last week.

The pieces on the Opinion Exchange website ("WSJ numbers don't add up") and in Tim O'Brien's Nov. 13 Blog House column attacking my work on the Minnesota recount were inaccurate. The Star Tribune's claims have been picked up by other media and used by the Franken campaign.

Just correcting "typos" in how the votes were recorded reduced incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman's lead from 725 to 206 votes when Minnesota counties certified the votes on Nov. 10.

Using the vote totals from Nov. 9, I pointed out that Franken's net gain was huge -- "new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined." A Star Tribune editor claimed "[Lott's] numbers are simply wrong. ... I don't know what statistical calculation Lott was using, but Obama clearly got more from the corrections."

The Star Tribune argued that Obama's net gain was 1,121 votes -- much bigger than Franken's, and thus evidence that nothing unusual had occurred in Franken's race.

Why the difference? . . .


The piece was the most read piece in the Star Tribune's editorial page on Sunday.


An update on the ballot recount in MN from SCSU Scholars can be found here.
Even more ballots misplaced in Minnesota

Even more ballots misplaced in Minnesota

The Star Tribune has this:

There were tense moments Friday in Anoka County and the Duluth area, as election officials went in search of ballots that had disappeared.

Anoka County officials discovered that a Coon Rapids precinct had three fewer ballots than the voting machine printout said should be in the box. The Coon Rapids city clerk and representatives from both campaigns drove to City Hall but didn't find them. The machine printout and the hand-count of the ballots indicated that the three ballots were votes for Franken.

In St. Louis County's recount Friday morning, four ballots -- three for Coleman and one for Franken -- could not be found in a packet delivered by Hermantown's Precinct 3.

County Election Director Paul Tynjala said it was hard to know why the machine count didn't match the hand-count.

A bigger problem threatened Friday afternoon, when county workers counting ballots from Duluth's Precinct 12 came up 74 ballots short of the number electronically counted on election night. City officials were called, and a search ensued.

This time, the missing ballots were found in one of the precinct's counting machines, locked in a city warehouse on Duluth's West Side, according to County Auditor Don Dicklich. All the ballots, some for Franken and some for Coleman, were there; campaign observers said they were satisfied it was an honest mistake, and none of the votes was challenged. . . .
How the recount works

How the recount works

On Jason Lewis' radio show on Thursday, a woman involved in the recount in Hopkins, MN reported that they were 86 votes short. They had 86 votes short of what had been counted on election night. Fortunately, the votes were eventually found: they were apparently in a back stairwell. Apparently, similar stories have occurred in other precincts.

When I get all the data it will be interesting to see what are the odds that the places that found votes for Franken in the "typo" corrections are also the places that found votes in the recount. The Duluth News Tribune reports this:

Most Minnesota counties reported little change from their election-night tallies. But in the St. Louis County precincts counted Wednesday, Franken gained 28 votes over those counted earlier. Officials said Franken gained 40 votes, while Coleman gained 12.

The 28-vote Franken gain, expected by the Coleman campaign, was due mostly to an older type of voting machine used on the Iron Range that does not always read faint lines.

The St. Louis County vote swing appeared to be the biggest change on the first day of the recount. . . .
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)