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It’s December 11th and we still don’t know who has won the race in Minnesota between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. Officially, according to the state of Minnesota, Coleman is up by 192. Unofficially, according to an internal Franken Campaign count, Franken leads by 4. Both sides are crying foul, citing controversies and irregularities, etc.

WTF? Exactly.

To really get a handle on the situation, let me present this excellent chart put together by the Minnesota Star Tribune:

Everything is now crystal clear, right? Well, if you said, “Yes”, then you understand the process far better than Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. From the appropriately titled Star Tribune article, “Senate recount: State law is clear on challenged ballots, except in the details,”:

But with a week to go before the state Canvassing Board begins ruling on challenged ballots, major questions remain about how the process will work.

It’s still not clear whether the campaigns will be allowed to argue their case to the board on each ballot, whether a simple majority of the five-person board will prevail in the case of split decisions, and how long this phase of the recount will play out.

It gets even better when you see where things stand regarding the interpretation of the rules to be followed by the state Canvassing Board when voting on the challenged ballots:

The board is made up of two state Supreme Court justices, two district court justices and Ritchie, who chairs the panel. It was unclear Tuesday whether a split board vote on a ballot would be decided by majority opinion, or whether the ballot would be rejected for lack of an unanimous vote.

Initially, Ritchie said he thought a split vote would be resolved in favor of the majority, but later said, “I think we don’t know. Because we haven’t as a group discussed any aspect of how this part will proceed. … We have to figure how we handle those. Do we put them aside and come back to them?”

Two state Supreme Court justices, two district court justices and the Secretary of State and no one knows the proper procedure here? The recount has been ongoing for a month. You think someone on the Canvassing Board might have taken the initiative to brush up on state election rules given that this is the closest election in state history.

Unbelievably, the Canvassing Board doesn’t meet to begin the review process of the challenged ballots until December 19th. Ritchie claims they’ll finish the review in four days. The Star Tribune did some math and estimated it will take them closer to 10. Not a problem, says Ritchie, stating that the Canvassing Board will break for the holidays, but will reconvene as many times as necessary to complete the task. The new Congress convenes on January 6th. The race is on.

But wait, there’s more!

You may have noticed the note in the chart above stating that there were 133 ballots missing from a precinct in Dinkytown. Yes, there really is a community in Minneapolis called Dinkytown. Apparently, in trying to hunt down those pesky ballots, someone at the county elections warehouse opened a box and discovered a plastic bag full of uncounted absentee ballots. Not only are the elections officials in the following video stumped when asked whether or not the ballots will now be counted, but they do a damn fine job of stumbling through what might have happened to the original 133 missing ballots as well:

Sadly, it seems the search for the 133 missing ballots is now being called off.

In light of all the controversy, Al Franken’s campaign released a video on YouTube yesterday containing emotional interviews with voters whose absentee ballots had been erroneously rejected and were not counted. Not surprisingly, the Coleman camp issued a statement calling the video a “new low” in Minnesota politics.

Besides being a ridiculously transparent response…you can’t tell me they wouldn’t be doing the same thing right now if the recount numbers weren’t going their way…the fact is, Coleman and his staff seem to have rather short memories. I, for one, would argue that this was the lowest point in Minnesota politics:

Approximately 192 votes now separate the two candidates in a race where nearly 2.5 million ballots were cast. I can’t imagine a better example of the phrase, “Every vote counts.” Unless, of course, you count this or this. This concludes argument #157 regarding why we need a new election system in this country.

In closing, I leave you with the Franken campaign’s new video, “My Vote”:

–Gordy

Election coleman, Election, franken, minnesota, recount, senate, Voting

UPDATE (11/26/08): The MN Canvassing Board has ruled that the 12,000 or so rejected absentee ballots will not be recounted. Let the circus begin.

Remember the election that happened three weeks ago?

It’s still happening in Minnesota.

As of 8PM yesterday, Coleman held a lead of about 213 votes in the current recount. The woman in the picture above is reacting to news that her table would need to count the ballots again…the ballots they had just finished recounting. Approximately 18% of the total ballots still need to be recounted and then Minnesota elections officials get to deal with all the ballots challenged by the candidates. Right now, the number of challenged ballots stands at nearly 4,000.

Hopefully, elections officials are going to pause things for a bit following work on Wednesday and let all these people eat some turkey, because pending the outcome of today’s meeting of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, things are about to get a lot worse.

At issue are thousands of absentee ballots that were rejected for a variety of reasons, many of which are likely to be found erroneous after further legal review. If the board decides to allow the absentee ballots to be counted, expect a firestorm of controversy of epic proportions. You’ll also be able to add the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race to the list of elections full of unbelievable twists, legal battles and drama.

Millions of tax-payer dollars spent on elections, a months-long recount process, the likely upcoming court battles, and the potential for a seat from Minnesota to sit vacant in the U.S. Senate for months while this is all sorted out. All to end in, what is likely to continually be, a disputed outcome. Even if the recount returns results similar to those of Election Day, the U.S. Senate could throw another wrench in the works:

If the strategy of adding previously rejected ballots to the Minnesota Senate recount is successful, a final outcome could be months away. In 1975, the U.S. Senate refused to accept New Hampshire’s certification that Republican Louis Wyman had won by two votes. The seat was vacant for seven months, with the Senate debate spanning 100 hours and six unsuccessful attempts to break a filibuster and vote on who should be seated. The impasse ended only when a special election was agreed to, which was won by Democrat John Durkin.

Democracy is alive and well in our country…unless you count the whole voting thing.

–Gordy

Election coleman, Election, franken, minnesota, senate, Voting

The Republicans received a smackdown of epic proportions on Tuesday and, with as many as three Senate seats likely headed for recount, things may yet get worse. Still, after the last two elections being chock full of voter suppression and intimidation, corrupted e-voting machines, voter suppression and counting irregularities, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to read pieces like this from the ultra-conservative rag, The American Spectator.

The conspiracy theory panic in the article begins:

We received a note that there was a possibility that Multnomah County’s election offices were flooded and that the “press was being asked to leave.” It sounded sketchy, so I called to check it out.

OMG, the Oregon Democrats made it pour down rain in November to intentionally flood the Multnomah County election offices so they could cheat their way to a Merkley win!

Or…maybe not:

According to Shawn Cunningham in their public affairs office, no press has been asked to leave whatsoever. There’s a little bit of water in the basement, “the building was built in 1925,” and they needed to move the ballots, which the press is welcome to bear witness to. He says that there are observers watching this process closely. I haven’t yet checked in with GOP or DNC observers, but that’s the word so far.

Did they seriously think Smith had a chance to win in Multnomah County? Talk about grasping at straws. Gordon Smith used to be a fairly decent guy, on par with the old John McCain in terms of being not too far right of center, and generally working well with both sides to keep things moving forward. Things really started to come undone for Smith, however, when the Willamette Week exposed his hypocrisy regarding illegal immigration, allegations he adamantly denied in an interview with right-wing hack Lars Larson during which he called the report a “hatchet-job”, egging WWeek into returning to Eastern Oregon and getting not one, but 5 undocumented workers who were or had been employed by Smith Frozen Foods to go on record. In response to this second story:

“I think this means trouble for Gordon Smith,” says KXL’s conservative talk-show host Lars Larson, who’s usually in Republicans’ corner but is a critic of Smith on this issue. “If it turns out he has employed people illegally when he has claimed he has not, that’s a problem.”

But back to the American Spectator article for a minute. After it was written, and the reporter followed up via phone with Multnomah County Elections officials, he later updated the page with the following:

UPDATE: Does anyone know anyone who’s actually observing here?

Seriously? Smith had an initial lead on Election Day and several hours into the following day because all of the rural counties had counted 100% of their ballots. Those counties, unsurprisingly, lean heavily Republican. Once Lane and Multnomah counties, which are much more populated, started to catch up in the ballot counting, however, Merkley shot right past Smith. Anyone who was watching the local TV broadcasts Tuesday night could see, both in his facial expressions and body language, that Smith knew his lead wasn’t large enough to overcome the inevitability of the Multnomah County vote. Political analyst, Tim Hibbits, said as much Wednesday morning when, in spite of Smith currently leading, he was standing by his projection of a Merkley win.

Not to be outdone, the Republicans in Minnesota are already starting to suggest foul play in the Coleman/Franken race as well.

Maybe now Republicans will be more open to the idea of reforming the voting process in our country. I’ve already put forth an idea as to how we can begin to fix this. It’s time to set aside differences and combine forces to find a solution once and for all. Without a joint effort, every election is always going to be viewed as flawed by one side or the other, with someone feeling cheated.

Then again, maybe that’s been the point all along.

–Gordy

Election coleman, Election, franken, gordon smith, minnesota, oregon, senate, Voting