About those claims of "more votes than voters"

[MNSnowman]

... here's an explanation from Kurt Schiebel's blog Centrisity:

Only ONE precinct in the entire state, has more votes cast, that (sic) voters signed in on the rolls.

I had to dig around, at first, to find info on the only precinct that's numbers seemed very screwy. I found this article from early December that talks about the tumult in that precinct:

County election officials said Tuesday the problem started on Election Day morning at the Hazelwood Fire Station in Precinct 6 in the heart of Maplewood. When a ballot counter kept jamming, officials called for a runner to swap out the broken counter with one that worked.

By then, 171 people had voted and their ballots had been fed into the ballot box. Ninety-one of those votes were cast for Franken, 54 for Coleman and 26 for other candidates.

When the new counter replaced the one that malfunctioned, officials said an election judge should have re-fed the 171 ballots back in so they would be counted on the official tape. Instead, they sat in the ballot box and then in secured transfer cases until they were discovered by recount officials Tuesday at the Ramsey County recount site on Plato Blvd.

The error was blamed on an election judge's failure to follow proper procedures, according to Karen Guilfoile, Maplewood's director of city services. She stressed that all the votes were properly cast and securely protected the last month.

And the more votes than people signed in controversy, it was simply human error not recording Absentee registrations:

A second election judge error in the same precinct had Coleman observers wondering why there were 31 more ballots than voters who had signed in on Election Day. Guilfoile said the mistake involved absentee voters who properly sent in their registration cards, but whose names judges failed to record on the voting rolls on Election Day.
full blog entry here (http://centrisity.blogspot.com/2009/01/maplewood-06.html)
That would seem to answer the question raised in the WSJ opinion piece cited by bga which claims:

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.
Of course, the WSJ writer would have actually had to do some research -- including reading past newspaper articles or calling the City of Maplewood wherein the "Ramsey County precinct" sits to get more information. Or, the writer could simply rely upon the local Republican spin -- especially if that spin is to the benefit of the WSJ's editorial slant.

:rolleyes:

[Gopher4Life]

That's good info to know. If it's only one precinct, I'll buy the explanation.

The claim all over talk radio is that 25 precincts have more votes than voters once the recount was completed. They seem to corroborate this claim by speaking on-air with various officials, reporters, and pundits in Minnesota. It's because the problem might have been so widespread that I earlier said the election has been bungled and a new election would be the expensive but fair solution.

[UpnorthGo4]

The clue for me, and it should have been for the WSJ and the Conservative Pundits, is that Colemans's attorneys are not raising this as an issue. They are spending almost all of their time talking about absentee ballots, duplicate ballots, and lost ballots. I could be wrong, but I don't recall any instances where they have complained about precincts with more votes than voters (other than the duplicate ballot issue). The amount of misinformation and outright lies about this recount has been disgusting. What is going on is similar to complaints about the biased media. Partisan hacks will never complain about media bias that FAVORSs their candidate. Likewise, during election recounts the candidate who is behind wants to count every ballot possible, and the candidate who is ahead is looking for reasons not to count them.

[MNSnowman]

That's good info to know. If it's only one precinct, I'll buy the explanation.

The claim all over talk radio is that 25 precincts have more votes than voters once the recount was completed. They seem to corroborate this claim by speaking on-air with various officials, reporters, and pundits in Minnesota. It's because the problem might have been so widespread that I earlier said the election has been bungled and a new election would be the expensive but fair solution.Regarding media coverage, I'll point you to this "known rightie" blog, Powerline and one of its authors, Scott Johnson:


The media coverage of the events related to Minnesota's Senate election and subsequent recount has been so poor that it is difficult to determine what happened. The erosion of Senator Coleman's approximately 700 vote lead over Al Franken on November 5 to the emergence of Al Franken with a 225 vote lead over Senator Coleman on January 5 has given rise to implications that Democrats have stolen the election for Franken.


The Wall Street Journal editorial "Funny business in Minnesota" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html) is representative of this strain of commentary on the canvas and recount. This commentary comes with the underlying theme that Senator Coleman is a victim of Democratic scheming.

The Board of Canvassers that was convened to preside over the recount and rule on challenged ballots conducted itself honorably under difficult circumstances.

In addition to board chairman Mark Ritchie, the Man from ACORN who is Minnesota's Secretary of State, four judges served on the board. Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, Associate Justice Barry Anderson, and Ramsey County District Court Judges Ed Cleary and Kathleen Gearin filled it out. I have known Chief Justice Magnuson professionally more than 25 years. Justice Anderson was my law school classmate and is a friend. In my view, they are two of the best judges serving in the Minnesota courts. Period.


There was no noticeable partisan division among the board. Minnesotans are justifiably proud of the transparency and fairness of their work. I reject any imputation of misconduct to the board such as is implicit in the Journal editorial. Whatever inconsistencies the board committed in ruling on challenged ballots and other issues do not result from partisan mischief.
I'll also note that Johnson is skeptical of the independence of Richie and the Franken campaign but alleges no misdeeds. He seems much more critical of the Coleman campaign and its legal team ... and writes:

The portrayal of Senator Coleman as a victim akin to Dino Rossi in the Washington recount fiasco is misleading. Friends of ours who have observed the process up close and who know the players managing it on behalf of Senator Coleman share our misgivings regarding this portrayal.
the full blog entry is here (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022489.php)

[jamiche]

Coleman is highly unlikely to win this thing in court (the two repub judges who presided over the recount will hear the case when it comes before the Supremes). He would better preserve his future opportunities in either the private or public sectors by bowing out graciously. It appears that he's going to keep at it until he runs out of money or until he or his wife is indicted for bribery in the mysterious money transfer through the insurance brokerage firm for services not performed situation.

He should move to DC like they all do and get a job lobbying democrats on the hill.

[playhosea!]

That's good info to know. If it's only one precinct, I'll buy the explanation.

The claim all over talk radio is that 25 precincts have more votes than voters once the recount was completed. They seem to corroborate this claim by speaking on-air with various officials, reporters, and pundits in Minnesota. It's because the problem might have been so widespread that I earlier said the election has been bungled and a new election would be the expensive but fair solution.

This is one of the favorite plans of blowhards and the poorly informed. The problem is that redoing the election would be illegal. Minnesota election law provides procedures for close elections (mandatory recount, election contest, etc.). There is no provision to just re-do the election. Unless you have an objective standard in place before the election requiring a run-off vote, who gets to decide the state should re-vote? The Secretary of State? Conservative talk radio? Unless you had a law in place before the election, it is completely unworkable (not to mention illegal) to re-vote.

[Gopher4Life]

Hosea,

That rigid approach encourages corrupt recounts. I'm not saying corruption ocurred in this particular election, but a court should have the right to order a new election if corruption is exposed during an appeal.

[MNSnowman]

... a court should have the right to order a new election if corruption is exposed during an appeal.That sounds suspiciously like an "activist court" stratagem to me. If the District Court panel or the MN Supreme Court (or the US Supreme Court) were to do so, wouldn't they be legislating from the bench?!? :eek:

Seems to me that the Court can rule on the issues before it but I'm not aware that Coleman has petitioned for a new election ... he wants the Court to decide how certain ballots should (and/or should not) be counted as I understand it. I don't believe he's asked that the election be set aside but that the certification of election be revoked by the Court and that the Court rule on how certain ballots should be treated/counted by the Canvassing Board that certified the election.

Maybe one of the real lawyers on the board could clarify things here.

[Gopher4Life]

Snowman,

I'm not sure what invalidating a bungled election/recount has to do with legislating from the bench. IMO, the first should be a role of the courts while the second should not. Again, I'm not saying that this should be done in Minn unless the court case actually exposes misdeeds.

There were clearly irregularities in this election and recount, but I'm not sure that's not typical of elections everywhere. Systems are seldom perfect, and humans never are.

[MNSnowman]

I'm not sure what invalidating a bungled election/recount has to do with legislating from the bench. IMO, the first should be a role of the courts while the second should not. Again, I'm not saying that this should be done in Minn unless the court case actually exposes misdeeds.

There were clearly irregularities in this election and recount, but I'm not sure that's not typical of elections everywhere. Systems are seldom perfect, and humans never are.I don't believe Minnesota statutes authorize a "do-over" as relief ... my understanding is that the court can only rule on whether the procedures used to count certain ballots (or to exclude other ballots) were correct. Thus the court's purview is limited to that scope of authority.

If the court were to instead order a new election, I believe it would lie beyond the scope of statutes ... and thus the court would be acting in a legislative capacity to order such a remedy. Moreover, the court has to rule on the petition before it from the Coleman campaign -- and their petition doesn't request a new election but does request a change in counting (or excluding) specific types of ballots.

So if the court found that there was, if fact, double counting of some ballots, the court could order that the tally be revised to exclude those counts (and thus the final tally). I don't expect that to occur because I think the allegation of double-counting will be disproven in sworn testimony (as opposed to off-the-top-of-the-head spouting on talk radio).

If the court found all the allegations in Coleman's petition are valid, the final tally will be adjusted. The court would be stepping beyond its authority to order a new election and would be giving Coleman "relief" beyond what his petition requests.

[Schnoodler]

I don't think characterising this recount as bungled is a fair or accurate depiction. I think the rest of the countries election officials will be looking at this process in a favorable light.

Just because it hasn't panned out how you like doesn't make it bungled.

[Gopher4Life]

It's your State, your election, your winner, and your future. Al Franken?

[UpnorthGo4]

Quote: "It's your State, your election, your winner, and your future. Al Franken?"

Al Franken - Yes
Norm Coleman - No

[Oscar Munson]

It's your State, your election, your winner, and your future. Al Franken?

I'm proud to have donated money to, volunteered for, and voted for Senator-Elect Al Franken.

[Gopher4Life]

I rest my case.

[UpnorthGo4]

You need to consider the possibility that the real message that the voters sent in this election was not how happy they were with Al Franken as a candidate, but how dissatisfied they were with Norm Coleman as U.S. Senator. Nobody I know who voted for Al Franken thought he was the best person in Minnesota for the job. But if it was going to be a choice between Coleman and Franken, the choice was obvious. After he loses the recount battle in court we can only hope that we will never have Coleman to kick around again. He needs to spend the next few years getting his finances in order and then move on to something besides politics. After all, it is painfully obvious that he is just not very good at it.

[Gopher4Life]

>>...the real message that the voters sent in this election was not how happy they were with Al Franken as a candidate, but how dissatisfied they were with Norm Coleman...<<

Similarly, McCain probably could have won his race if the hatred of Bush, GOP, and war had not been so widespread and overwhelming. Or if the economy had not taken such a timely dive.

>>But if it was going to be a choice between Coleman and Franken, the choice was obvious.<<

Well, it clearly wasn't such an obvious choice or the race wouldn't have ended in a dead heat.

The choice between two weak candidates is the curse of our two-party system. We need more choices, more accountability, and far less expensive races. Instead, the system locks out alternative voices and maintains power for the two major parties. That's how you end up with Coleman vs. Franken.