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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.
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