Coleman campaign questions big Franken gains

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Chicago Examiner

WASHINGTON - Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign is using the state's open records law to ask state and all 87 counties for access to voting data and other records.

The Republican's campaign has questions about the gains that Democratic rival Al Franken has made since Election Day.

Coleman led Franken by 239 votes Friday afternoon - down from 590 the day before, as officials double-checked reports.

Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan complains of "statistically dubious and improbable shifts that are overwhelmingly accruing to the benefit of Al Franken."

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/a-1679246~Coleman_campaign_questions_big_Franken_gains.html

---

Also headlined in the Boston Herald...

Coleman campaign calls Franken gains ‘dubious’

WASHINGTON - Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign is using the state’s open records law to ask state and all 87 counties for access to voting data and other records.

The Republican’s campaign has questions about the gains that Democratic rival Al Franken has made since Election Day.

Coleman led Franken by 239 votes this afternoon — down from 590 the day before, as officials double-checked reports.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1130764&srvc=2008campnews&position=9

[av8rdave]

1. Sucks to be you, Norm

[BrklynLiberal]

2. DUH! Some nerve..and how do they explain the translaters that

were telling voters to vote for Coleman?

Do they think that we are all idiots that will sit back and take this shit again???

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. It's all those provisional ballots you vote suppressing GOP fucks made Democrats vote on, Norm. nt

[Doughboy71]

15. MN Doesn't have provisional ballots

We just have regular ballots. The only other ballots are the ones printed by the U.S. government / military for those in the military. Those ballots will need to be looked at because the machines MN uses had a hard time reading them. The precinct I was a challenger in, the election judges duplicated the U.S. government / military ballots onto ballots printed by the state.

[enlightenment]

19. Am I reading that correctly?

The election judges duplicated the ballots? They TRANSCRIBED the votes from one ballot to another ballot?

GOOD GRIEF.

How is that legal? Do they keep the originals with the duplicates (I hope) or toss the originals? Do you have details on this process?

gads.

That is mind-boggling. Just about the most outrageous thing I've heard about this election cycle.

wow.

[elocs]

36. I heard the MN Secretary of State explain this simply today on MN public radio.

Some absentee ballots cannot be read by the machine because of how they were folded. The judges, one from each party, take a new ballot and copy the folded and unreadable ballot and then feed it into the machine. So the judges from each party all agree the new ballot matches the original.

I don't see this as really being mind boggling or outrageous.

[enlightenment]

39. I dislike the idea that an individual's vote can potentially be

'filtered' through other people, regardless of who those people are - and I especially dislike the idea that the concept of the secret ballot, something enshrined in our system for a very good reason, is so easily dismissed. There are a lot of presumptions built into this 'fix' - and the more presumptions, the greater the possibility of innocent error or deliberate malfeasance.

One person/one vote should apply from the moment the individual votes until their vote is counted. If the system can't accommodate that, the system needs to be fixed.

[elocs]

41. Ultimately any ballot which is rejected by a machine will be filtered through people

in one way another whether it is reentering the information on a spoiled ballot onto a good one or having representatives and a neutral party agreeing on the intent of a ballot after examining it. The reality is that no system is perfect and we will still need humans to determine intent in one way or another. I see absolutely nothing wrong with election judges from both parties reentering the data exactly as it was on the original in order to be read by the machine.

[enlightenment]

44. I'll agree to disagree with you (as I don't think either of us is going to budge)

and ask a serious (not specious!) question: you wrote 'election judges from both parties' - are there election judges from ALL the parties or only from the two major parties?

Seems to me that if they are going to do this transcription, there should be judges from all the parties, as there is no guarantee that any one ballot contains votes for Repubs or Dems. Why should someone who voted for, say, the Green Party candidates feel warm and fuzzy about their ballot being transcribed by judges who represent other parties?

Do they have judges from all the parties? It sounded that way in your previous post, but now I'm not sure.

[elocs]

45. Ultimately, these ballots which can't be read by a machine will have to be examined by human beings.

Whether it is just the 2 major parties or all the parties, there is also a neutral judge there also. So if the implication is that there can be a conspiracy in remarking the ballot to exactly match the original, then there could also be a conspiracy in a hand recount with the same election judges present. It's 6 of one and a half dozen of the other so there is no difference, but with a neutral person there I have never heard of any wrongdoing. It is how it is done where I live and I am satisfied and confident with it.

The problem is that nobody has ever come up with a 100% foolproof election system where there is an assurance that there will be absolutely no mistakes made by humans or machines.

[enlightenment]

46. I'll agree with you on the last statement. nt

[Doughboy71]

38. You are correct

One Democratic and One Republican election judge sit down and copy the ballot that can't be read onto a new ballot. I did not see what they did with the original ballot but they did not match it up with the ballot they just filled out.

[gratuitous]

4. Getting unseasonably warm in Minnesota, is it?

Has to be nail-biting time for some. Well, not for "Empty Suit" Coleman: He'll get his sinecure at the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation whenever he's ready for it. But Coleman's staffers know that they're very late getting resumes and applications out, and other staff people with better resumes are teeming in the employment pool for a rapidly shrinking number of jobs.

Time to panic, Cullen Sheehan?

[damntexdem]

23. Quality of the resumes aside, the market for GOP senatorial staff is indeed rapidly shrinking.

And it may be that sending those resumes out to Alaska or Georgia won't be such great strategies, either.

Three more may yet fall from the senatorial tree this year!

[onehandle]

5. Wait until the recount, you tools. 239 is doable. nt

[Merlot]

6. go ahead normy, dig deep into the gains that Franken is making

You'll find that a lot of Frankens votes were SUPRESSED and now that's coming to light. A typo here, a double entry there, and it all ads up to a bunch of partisans not doing their job.

[grannylib]

7. Oh what BS...there was at least one instance where a vote count

of 124 for Franken was accidentally recorded as 24...simple human error. Just like Norm himself...just a big fat mistake.
He knows he's gonna lose when all the votes are counted, and he wants to take the focus off his translator urging Somalis to vote for Norm...
What a fuckin' tool.
GO AL!

[pattmarty]

8. Maybe if Franken indeed wins, Coleman will forgo a recount?

[Supersedeas]

30. fat chance

[Zorra]

50. IMO, only if Coleman did something illegal regarding the voting process.

He wouldn't want to get caught.

[ladywnch]

9. Norm knows that there are problems with the numbers which is why

he wanted Franken to forego the recount.

[Larkspur]

10. Coleman is using the 2000 Republican Recount strategy as a guide

He's hoping to pressure the media and public opinion to say the recount is not necessary because Coleman won, but Franken is following the law and like in the 2000 Prez election/recount, public opinion supported counting all the votes.

I feel that Franken will win after the recount. Coleman's actions show that he is really scared about the results of the recount.

[desktop]

14. Coleman has tried that and it has failed except with of course the rightwingers

My thoughts are as close as it is, Franken will win a recount, unless there are Republican operatives controlling the recount. Which from what I understand is not true. My reasoning is Republicans by their very nature are more dishonest than Democrats. Lying, cheating, and stealing votes are more acceptable to them because it furthers the agenda of winning. Many of these rural counties are Republican controlled, their people did the original counting, and their people wanted Coleman to win. In other words I would bet dollars to donuts, some of those numbers were fudged and with nonpartisan counters looking at them, Franken will win.

[BearSquirrel2]

42. Look at the cave wall ...

The Republicans have a captive audience that they've hoodwinked and snookered into voting against their own self interest. Everything I hear from them right now is "keep staring at the wall".

Today I saw an article about runs on gun stores because asshole conservative talking heads have told people that Obama is going to take their guns. And they are so hoodwinked ... they believe these guys.

[Roy]

27. Hmmmm....

Does that mean that Coleman doesn't have his own personal goon squad to shut down the counting of votes?

Maybe Tom Delay has one that's not busy at present.

Here ya go Norm... 1(800) call-delay

[kestrel91316]

11. Recount. Every last paper ballot. By hand. Deal with it Norm,

people frickin' hate you.

[yellowcanine]

12. Shades of James Baker in Florida 2000 recount - kept complaining that Gore was gaining votes.

As if that was relevant to anything. During a recount votes can shift. Kind of why the recount is done, dontcha think - to make sure the original count was accurate?

[pfitz59]

13. time for a hand count

does minnesota have a "voter intent" law? unscannable ballots are not necessarily spoiled ballots! hand count them all!

[rfrrfrrfr]

16. There is a great diary over at DKOS

That answers most of the questions raised here.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/6/20279/1127/736/656240

And this race is actually more like the 2004 Washington state governors race and all indications are the Republicans are going to get just as ugly and stupid about this recount as they were about that one.

[CatholicEdHead]

17. Yes we do

So it will not be over for a very long time (1-2months). The hand recount will start in 10-14 days to really find out who wins.

Only the wing nuts want it to end now, the vast majority of the state is content to wait until the hand recount is over.

[CatholicEdHead]

18. Dupe delete

[desktop]

20. This could end up being a major voting scandal

If nonpartisan people start carefully looking at all the numbers and how they were calculated, this whole Senate election could blow up with massive fraud being found.

[4lbs]

21. Waiting for the day that Bill O'Reilly says "Senator Al Franken" as he throws up in his mouth some.

:rofl:

[damntexdem]

22. Pure b.s. The inaccurate ballot counting machine was likely to disproportionately hurt Franken.

First-time voters, those more likely to vote for Franken, were also less likely to fill in ballots exactly enough, so to be rejected by the machine. So the recount, where hand counting can determine the 'intent of the voter' on thousands of rejected ballots, is likely to disproportionately help Franken.

But, then, the hand count has not yet started; and still the Coleman 'lead' has shrunk by half. That would be due to inaccurate reporting from precincts. So this is what Coleman finds 'dubious' -- an argument that assumes that reporting errors would be random. However, as we know from recent elections, such errors may not be random at all, rather intentional. Thus, the shrinking lead may well be dubious indeed, reflecting dubious reporting on election night. The only thing 'dubious' likely in this case was dubious aid to Coleman after the voters had voted.

[jwirr]

34. One thing: When I voted the machine I put the completed ballot in

told me if I voted wrong - meaning for more than one candidate for a position or something like that. So that would have helped the first time voters.

[BearSquirrel2]

43. No fair ...

They shaved those votes fair and square. You're violating Republicans' rights to steal votes!!!

[Zorra]

24. Questioning how we found the stolen votes, Normie? We'll find the rest of 'em, too. n/t

[dpbrown]

25. This is what happens when you actually count the votes, Norm

The sooner we can be rid of you, the better.

[Wizard777]

26. Source: BALTIMORE Examiner

[KamaAina]

47. Other source: RIGHT-WING Boston Herald

FAIL.

edit: header

[Wizard777]

52. The Source is misquoted. It's the Baltimore Examiner. Not Chicago Examiner.

[nbcouch]

28. Wanna find a picture of Norm Coleman?

Look up "douchebag" in the dictionary.

[kenfrequed]

29. Statistically dubious and improbable?

I really don't think his advisor knows what the hell they are talking about. Inaccuracies in an elections reporting like this, at the hundreths of a percent of difference are actually rather probable. What would be HIGHLY statistically improbable would be if the differences all cancelled each other out in a zero sum manner.

[Diane R]

31. I know another potential source of votes that Franken may not be aware of...Peace Corp votes.

I hope someone can get this info to Al Franken.

My son is in the Peace Corps in Swaziland. He told me about a month ago that all the volunteers had already voted electronically. He said the headquarters had a special setup that allowed them to cast their votes via computer, rather than using their absentee ballots.

Yet, I received a call from the local Obama campaign this past Sunday stating they had not received a ballot from my son (our county votes via mail-in ballots; we don't go to the polls). So, I am wondering if the Peace Corp votes reached elections offices. If not, that might be a good source of extra votes...those kids typically tend to be Democrats.

It's worth checking out.

[Festivito]

32. Rs knocked Ds off roles, then complain the Ds vote for Ds. Hmmm.

So the provisional ballots are mostly for Democrats.

Hmmm.

Was it Republicans who showed themselves at the Secretary of State offices with lists of people to remove?

Hmmm?

And now they want to say that because the removed/provisional-ballot people are mostly Democrats that something must be afoot and those ballots should be ... Hmmm? (R: thrown away, D: counted).

I'll add that as a Dem, I'd keep those ballots as evidence that Republicans targeted Democratic areas in order to disenfranchise Democrats. And they should be prosecuted with that evidence.

[jwirr]

33. What is statistically dubious about this race is that Minnesotans should

have elected Obama by such a large margin and not voted for a Democratic senator. Everyone here knows that Coleman was just another bushie like mcshame. The polls showed it but suddenly we have a race that is the opposite of what the polls show us? Keep counting. I want to know that my vote counted for the candidate that I voted for.

[truthisfreedom]

35. Heh. It's always something with Norm. Couldn't possibly be that the first time the votes were

reported, some election officials twisted the facts to help out Coleman, and now that they know their books were cooked and they're about to be caught, they're telling the whole truth instead?

Sounds about right to me.

[libodem]

37. I wish Norm Coleman

the, Paul Wellstone, small plane express ticket to hell.

[Bjorn Against]

40. Since when was .01% of the vote a "big gain"?

The gains Franken has made have been extremely small, they just look like a lot because the margin between them is so tiny as well. This is normal after an election, and a big part of the reason why we have recounts.

[LisaL]

48. Hah.

[brentspeak]

49. We'll see just how interested Norm really is for the "healing process to start"

should Franken come out ahead in votes following a recount.

[LisaL]

51. Hey if Franken keeps on gaining like that he might be

ahead before recount starts.

[Ichingcarpenter]

53. Al Franken Should Concede