There was almost an incident in Portland!! Don't know if the closeness of the race will require a recount, but no one is talking about that...Hell, we just got rid of that lying scumbag, Gordon Smith!!

See http://portland.indymedi.../en/2008/11/381941.shtml

[ed note: Cut and paste deleted. Please read our rules, Styve. Thank you. --99]

Hi Brad,

Great works as always. The recount will be done by hand and is not expected to be done until into December. Exit polls showed Franken up by 12. I know we have been told not to trust them, but could they be THAT far off?

Check out the article here

My favorite part from the article:

Coleman urged Franken to waive his right to a recount, saying that the prospect of changing the result was remote and that a recount would be costly to taxpayers (about $86,000).

"I just think the need for the healing process is so important. ... hopefully, you don't have TV ads during an election recount," Coleman said.

Norm Coleman really is a scumbag...let's hope this turns out well for Franken.

Al Franken,

You are cordially invited to sign the Standing For Voters pledge:

I pledge to use my candidacy, whenever feasible, to advance the preservation of democracy. I will officially challenge the results of the election as provided by law if the combination of election conditions, incident reports, and announced election results calls into question the reliability of the official vote count. Should another candidate be declared the winner in my race, I will wait until all valid votes are counted and all serious challenges resolved before conceding defeat.

You, and any other candidate for any office in this year's election, regardless of party affiliation, may sign the pledge at StandingForVoters.org.

Note: StandingForVoters.org is a project of Velvet Revolution, of which Brad Friedman is co-founder.

At the polling place where I voted in Rochester, the machine into which completed ballots were to be fed was not working. Instead, we were just stuffing them through a slot in a box. It looked extremely insecure to me, and could have VERY easily been tampered with if someone was so inclined. My nervousness was compounded by the fact that the man in charge had what I felt was an overtly partisan response to an old man wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt. This t-shirt said "Bush's Last Day: January, 20th, 2009". The man in charge at the polling location growled that he was going to make the man turn the shirt inside out before he was allowed to vote. I know that there is no campaigning at polling places, but G.W. Bush is not on the ballot (thank goodness), and a Republican or an Independent could just as easily be happy to see Bush going as a Democrat, so it's not a partisan shirt. Anyway, the fact that this man was in charge of an unsecured box of ballots made me very nervous, and other voters expressed similar sentiments aloud as we paused at the box, wondering if it was okay to leave our ballots like this.
This happened at Jefferson school in Rochester, MN.

Mark Sutton host of Liberal Arts Radio here - we met in Denver and we did a phone interview a few weeks back.

I am on the ground in Minnesota now and would love to work with you on this. I asked Franken what his election protection plans were on Sunday after his debate, and he state he had confidence in Mark Ritchie, the MN Sec of State.

Listen here:
http://www.liberalartsradio.com/
scroll down a bit

Keep counting and continue to get the truth out there. Thanks EVERYONE who cares about WHAT THIS COUNTRY IS.

it is totally absurd that the only way that a dem candidate can win is if they win by a landslide in order to make up ground for the 3 to 5% margin of theft.

my guess is that absentee mail-in ballots and provisionals were also not uniformly counted.

Oh, I see their strategy this year: wholesale cheating a la 2004 would be too obvious and hard to pull off. Therefore, spot fixes to limit the damage.

In Bev Harris' book "Black Box Voting

Comment got dropped. Read the book to find out about GA.

News from Oregon is better...

http://www.blueoregon.co...8/11/celebrate-with.html

----------------

Alaska looks like a real mess, though.

http://soaelections.gci.net/data/results.htm

Anyone else have a problem with roughly 89,000 FEWER Alaskans casting votes in the 2008 Presidential elections than voted in the 2004 Presidential elections?

Sarah Palin on the ballot in Alaska for Vice President, and 89,000 fewer Alaskans show up in 2008 to vote either for or against her?

[ed note: Cut and pastes deleted. Please read our rules, AF. Thank you. --99]

Barack Obama 1,573,207
John McCain 1,275,429
Franken 1,211,167
Coleman 1,211,642

Double check that those are the counts, but doesn't that mean 360,000 less votes for the senate race than the presidential race? Anyone find that odd? Was there a 3rd party candidate or something?

Willburr...~ I never found him funny, his show on AAR was unlistenable.

Optical scanning methods have been around for decades. We use them regularly in scoring tests. This is highly reliable technology so either these machines are not well built or they don't have the software process in place to catch errors. One way to do this, for example would be to double scan each ballot and a program could easily compare the first and second scan. If different, they could be compared and corrected. This would take some unique identifier or same order of scanning involved, but it's doable.

As one of the first indie reporters to cover the Stolen Election of 2004, (See "We the People Do Not Concede" Coatal Post, January 2005) I find it ironic that Franken is in this situation. He never wanted ANY VOTING ACTIVISTS or voting reformers on his show. Andy Stephenson was constantly on Randy R.'s show on Air America. He wasn't allowed to go near Franken's show.

Franken is also okay with keeping the corporation's executives in the loop on our health care. Boo on that idea.

Anyway, I hope Franken wins, and that this serves as a wakeup call.

Optical scanners are a joke. So are voting machines, punch cards, hand counts, write-ins, and voice counts. We should all have to drive to Washington DC, all at once, and raise hands and have the President count them himself. It's the only way to be sure.

Nice conspiracy theories, Brad.

I think the Sec of State is a decent guy trying to do a decent job for his citizens, which is better than I can say for lots of them... but that does not mean he "gets" how to make an election rock solid safe/clean.

First, the chain-of-custody of the ballots is absolutely critical to a recount, and I am not impressed from what I saw at my precinct/county.

In my county, Ramsey, the St. Paul metro area, a radio reporter doing a pre-election story mentioned there were so many ballots this election, they were stacked high in someones office. There is a picture at this link

http://minnesota.publicr...s_form_for_early_voting/

Ballots in unsealed, generic cardboard banker boxes, in what the oral radio report described as an election officials office. Not a special safe room, not a vault but an office, which, who nows how well it is protected and of course, who knows at night how may people would have access to. How easy is it to reach into one of these boxes and make some ballots dissappear. And who knows what systems they have in place for counting the number of absentee ballots as they come in the mail each day, and for the chain-of-custody. Lots of absentee ballots mailed to folks never get returned, so without strict recording, who would know if a few that were mailed in then didn't get counted.

In my county at least, these boxes of absentee ballots(they seem to be sorted by precinct in the picture)were sent to their precincts to be counted at the precinct and then appear to have just become a part of the ballots cast on the day of the election. I went to my precinct at the end of day and after printing the poll-tape from the optical scan machine, they took out two stacks of ballots and put into two similar cardboard bankers boxes, one stack was the general ballots, and one stack was the ballots that had write-ins, I am assuming so those could be processed for manual text entry of the write-in names. Again, the boxes appeared un-sealed. There did seem to be decent accounting of the number of ballots. While they tolerated me nicely, they seemed to think I dropped from Mars when I asked if they were going to post the precinct tally off the machine. They said they would if I wanted, and eventually gave me and some party watch dog guy that had been there all day copies of the poll tape that the machine produced, which did check out with the States web site tally.

Anyway, this is just my county, which was heavily for Franken. Who knows about the procedures in all the other counties. The northern, more Coleman leaning county have different machines apparently, and if my metro county has less than air-tight chain-of-custody for ballots, who knows what goes on in less scrutinzed, lower-staffed counties. I heard on the radio that ballots are being stored at the county level until recount that doesn't happen til next week, so really if machine count is rigged, how hard would it be in the meantime to enter an office storing ballots and make them match the State's reported tallies.

What strikes me is how many people have Franken's attitude which is essentially: if the people I see running the election are good, reasonable together people, then all must be fine. But just one nefarious person, insider or outsider, who is more cunning can easily by-pass many decent looking systems.

An anecdote in my life keeps coming to mind, about 25 years ago when I was in my early 20's I had a New Yorker friend visit, generally a really good person, but when we went shopping in MN, she just starting doing things like switching price tags on items to get a lower price etc...For her it is was a game, and she was expecting the clerks to catch her most of the time, as was her expereince back home. She was continually amazed how noone was on-guard to catch her, she thought MN stores were like stealing candy from babies. My point is, if you are naive, ignorant, and trusting, someone like my friend or someone much worse, will come along and be able to run amok becuase you did not think to guard against a really bad actor.

By the way, Coleman's lead is down to 477, so with about 3000 precincts, thats just one vote difference for every clumped of five precincts....

The optical scanners are not really as "flawed" as people claim when their candidate loses in a close race. The bottom line is that all methods of ballot counting, including hand counting, have a non-zero error rate. One redeeming feature of optical scan systems, over say, electronic voting systems, is that the ballots are physical objects that can be recounted by more than one method.

What are you crybabying about did you not have a big enough win the other night. I guess it doesn't bother you all the ways the democratic party has cheated in the past and still is cheating to this day! I live in georgia and you say the cleland losing to chambliss was a surprise, maybe to you it was but people here in georgia do not like cleland, and from what i've seen from this martin guy if anybody cheated it would be him. I'm tired of hearing what a "positive" campaign obama ran also because during the monday night football game he and martin's commercials were running constantly and they were all negative! You could barely tell where martin's commercial ended and obama's began they were running together almost. So anyway enjoy your win but no it's put up or shut up time for your crappy dems, and you are depending on a guy who has done absolutely nothing as a senator so we will see. It's only a matter of time before the republicans make a comeback.

One redeeming feature of optical scan systems, over say, electronic voting systems, is that the ballots are physical objects that can be recounted by more than one method.

As long as the ballots haven't been hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar and stored on Funk & Wagnalls front porch - or in the office of a partisan politician or operative. If we can work on that and institute random audits then we might have something we can compare to our first best option, paper ballots hand counted.

karen said on 11/6/2008 @ 4:43 am PT...

" think the Sec of State is a decent guy trying to do a decent job for his citizens, which is better than I can say for lots of them... but that does not mean he "gets" how to make an election rock solid safe/clean"

Just an FYI: Mark Richie the Secretary of State in Minnesota does 'get it'. He has been involved in ensuring fair and transparent elections in MN for years prior to being elected SOS. My understanding is they will hand count the ballots as some have been found to be marked incorrectly with a check, an 'X', or cirled name instead of filling in the dot. I think Franken will win.

So the only way a Democrat can lose is by Republican cheating and the vote counting computers are in on the conspiracy too? You should really see a pshrink about the paranoia.

Another Georgia voter here with a slightly different viewpoint from Barry. I've been suspicious of the GA machines since that 2002 election when the Democratic Gov & Senate candidates (Barnes & Cleland), both leading by several points in the last poll before the actual election, ended up losing by very similar margins on election day. And what is this business of the operating software being "proprietary" to the company who built and sold the voting machines? I'll bet Bank of America doesn't allow "proprietary" software to be used on their ATMs without any input from BOA! Although feeling somewhat vindicated by Obama's nationwide victory, I still object to the use of these machines simply because there is no way to verify the validity of the original count or a recount. Why, in God's name, would ANY candidate NOT be in favor of a verifiable paper trail? One can only guess...

The vote total across the country so far stands at about 122 million counted out of 136 million +/- cast.
Absentee and uncounted early votes amount to an estimated 3 to 4 million, which leaves over 10 million uncounted votes or 7%.

It would be an interesting study to see how many of these "spoiled" votes were for Obama or another democrat vs. a republican.

This does not count disenfranchised voters showing up to vote the day after or who didn't vote because were too afraid to vote based on voter caging tactics.

It seems to me that Obama really won in a massive landslide... so much so that they couldn't steel enough votes to stop him.
Then again Obama is looking to out many Blue Dog corporatist democrats in his administration.

I listened to A Franken on Air America and watched his shift towards the middle with dismay.
As a former Minnesotan I am familiar with Norm and would be happy to see him get knocked off by Al.

Good luck to Al with the unreliable recount.......

[ed note: Find some other terms to dis Brad with or go away. --99]

I'm glad they have paper ballots, and extra glad they'll be counted by hand (I hope that's true!).

I also hope Franken is engaged in this process. It sounds like he is. It will be a wakeup call for him, and he will see how messy and messed up our vote counting process is.

To those who call us "conspiracy theorists" I say this: **Election** fraud is a much bigger concern than **voter** fraud. Sure, I don't want Mickey Mouse and Marry Poppins voting in our elections, but I doubt there's very much of that going on in a concerted way that a political party could take advantage of. On the other hand, we use machines demonstrated many times over to be easily hackable, and very unreliable even when they are in their "best" working condition (not to mention, expensive wastes of tax payer money).

In America, is it not too much to ask for elections that are transparent and verifiable? Isn't this what our soldiers, past and present, fight for?

Wilburrr... ~ My Ass has some company for a change!

BTW ~ I think Al Franken will be a fine politician .

bejammin075 ~
I don't want Mickey Mouse and Marry Poppins voting in our elections.

How about Mr. Ed ?

We election integrity people some times miss the forest for the trees. The real travesty is that one of these two candidates is going to be elected to the US Senate with only 42% support of the voters.

To learn about a reform that is working its way through the United States that requires that candidates earn a true majority of the vote in order to be elected, please visit www.fairvote.org and read about instant-runoff voting.

Local news in the Twin Cities reported that the Franken/Coleman recount will be done by hand. They also explained in detail that the ballots will be examined for voter intent - i.e. ovals not completely filled, name circled, etc.

Here's some numbers that don't jive with me either: 2008 had an all-time record newly registered Democrats, due in large part to the extended Hillary/Obama primary...the first time the later states like Pennsylvania (where I live) actually had a stake in it.

Obama had 1.9 million more votes in 2008, than Bush had in 2004. That doesn't jive with me.

For those of you who keep saying these are conspiracy theories...YOU are a conspiracy theory!!!

@#12: There is actually a 3rd party candidate, Dean Barkley. He apparently got "over 437,000" votes.

Um, Brad, while I appreciate your work, it seems surprisingly petty of you to repeatedly mention that Franken didn't have you on. His show's been off the air for what, 18 months or so? Isn't it a coup for a blogger to appear on multiple shows as it is? And I could be wrong, but I listened to him occasionally and thought he did cover some voter suppression stories.

Regardless, here's to a full and accurate recount and run-off.

Barry Schultz #21

I'm a GA voter, too.

2002 saw the installation of Diebold vote stealing machines in 100% of our precincts in GA.

Opinion polls in Georgia on the eve of the 2002 general election showed Democratic incumbent Gov. Roy Barnes leading by 9-11 points and Sen. Max Cleland ahead of his Republican challenger by 2-5 points, so it was a shock on election night when the returns showed Barnes losing to Republican Sonny Perdue, 46 to 51 percent, a swing of as much as 16 points from the last opinion polls, and Cleland losing to Saxby Chambliss by 46 to 53 percent, a last-minute swing of 9-12 points.

Please, educate yourself - 2006 - Will The Next Election Be Hacked?

Fresh disasters at the polls --- and new evidence from an industry insider --- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted.

To anyone who thinks this is all whining and/or conspiracy theories, have you actually taken a look at the evidence? This isn't about right and left, it's about right and wrong. Is calling for transparency and fairness in our elections anything BUT patriotic? If ATMs constantly broke down, or miscounted your money- to your disadvantage- would you continue to use them? And please, Brad, add poetry to your list of comment no-no's!

Okay, after thinking about it for a while...I'd encourage who ever the loser is to ask for a hand counted recount. We the People could start a fund for it. Cause like Brad says, "its not about right or left, ITS ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG!"

If I get this correct, there was actually an overvote in Hennepin County, minnesota. The presidential vote adds to 651920 and the senate vote totals 651962. Isn't there almost always an undervote? Also, McCain only got 35% in Hennepin but Coleman got 36% of a larger total, even when there was a 3rd party candidate pulling votes from both. Does this seem wierd to anyone else?

Better yet, is there anything left in Mr. President Elect Obama's war chest?

The gap between votes for Coleman and Franken continue to narrow: Coleman now leads by 336 votes.

http://www.startribune.c...Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUX

What I don't understand is how this number can change when the actual recount hasn't started yet.

Ideas anyone?

- Tom

Wilburrr... ~ I could have voted for horse on the ballot but left my nepotism and breakfast at the door...

Tom, absentee ballots, late reporting precincts....

Hey there TomR, Shit let's go to the state web site and see if all the precincts are in. See ya.

Here's a link to election precincts reporting:

http://electionresults.s...n.us/20081104/MapVML.asp

I'm guessing absentee ballots--it's troubling to me that election day numbers go out like all ballots have been counted, but perhaps not.

- Tom

@#39 Charles - third party candidates don't always pull from both sides - this guy pulled in democrats and some independents. Also, people (especially independents) sometimes split tickets, so it perfectly reasonable for someone to vote for Obama and Coleman. The numbers alone don't reveal a conspiracy. In fact, I'd go so far as to say a Coleman victory alone does not mean there was a conspiracy; there would have to be actual evidence of something untoward.

I haven't been able to listen to Mr. Franken's show, although I have read his books. I also remember how incredibly blown away he was by our loss in 2004, when the exit polls strongly indicated a win by John Kerry. (Exit polls are used around the world as excellent predictors of the outcome of elections, and to highlight cheating.)
Perhaps he didn't have you on his show because he would have been afraid of really losing it on air (going ballistic on live radio is probably not a good idea) because of his own deep and disgusted view about the cheating in the 2000 and 2004 elections. He seems to be deeply passionate about our losses, and he surely is aware of films and books by well-respected people that have thoroughly documented the extraordinary cheating by the Republicans in both of those elections. Anyway, I hope this is the reason that he didn't have Brad, et. al., on his show.

Karl Rove said,"we have to keep them just close enough to steal them"

Do we know who these people are???

State Canvassing Board. The State Canvassing Board shall consist of the secretary of state, two judges of the supreme court, and two judges of the district court selected by the secretary of state. None of the judges shall be a candidate at the election. If a judge fails to appear at the meeting of the canvassing board, the secretary of state shall fill the vacancy in membership by selecting another judge who is not a candidate at the election. Not more than two judges of the Supreme Court shall serve on the canvassing board at one time.

I just called the Franken HQ. The difference is now down to 239 votes that Coleman has over Franken. The numbers keep changing everyday because they are are rechecking the numbers that each county submitted and found some errors (in favor of Coleman of course).

One county, Pine County, originally reported 24 votes for a precinct but the actual number was 124 voting for Franken.

The canvassing of the numbers of all the vote tallies for 87 counties in MN will be finished by mid-week. the official recount won't start until Nov 19th.

When they do the handcount, there will be many people from both the Dem and Repub party on hand to watch handcount process nov 19th.

Our Minnesota Secretary of State and our state legislators have no excuse if they overlook or ignore any of these red flags or mess up chains of custody, etc. There are election integrity activists here in Minnesota, myself included, who not only worked to get Mark Ritchie elected (and ditch the evil Fundie Republican Mary Kiffmeyer) in 2006, but have worked overtime informing him of the myriad pitfalls of these machines and chain of custody issues, etc. We have some new laws on the books as a result, including the new recount law which was just signed May 18. He had BETTER not mess up!

Before the 2002 election, then-Georgia-Secretary-of-State Cathy Cox spoke to our annual Democratic dinner, outlining the new proposed Diebold system. Several of us asked her about possible abuses, including the need for a paper trail. There was no need to worry, she explained, and a paper trail could be falsified as could paper ballot results. Ohio proved that our concern was justified. I don't think she was knowingly part of a conspiracy--just blinded by the science and Diebold's sales pitch would be my guess (Diebold didn't help her win her 2006 contest for Ga. Democratic Governor nominee.)

But the real concern for Georgia election isn't what happened at the polls but what happened before voters touched those screens:
http://www.gregpalast.co.../the-steal-you-wont-see/

Al Franken has gained ALL 100 votes--every one of them--"found" in a heavily Democratic precinct, in defiance of the mathematical laws that govern the universe. It is, ah, fascinating that Democrats ALWAYS--100% of the time--manage to pick up votes in recounts. Hey, so what if it's statistically impossible? They deserve to win, right?

Keep hammering away at those magic computers and constructing baseless fantasies, gang. Meanwhile, real flesh-and-blood Democrats will keep stealing elections the old-fashioned way, a few votes at a time.

Ronald

I think if you step back from your bias for a minute even you will be able to see the flaw in your reasoning there.

If Democrats so frequently pick up votes in recounts, always, as you say, isn't the logical conclusion more like it is always Republicans playing games with the counts? It's always Republicans engaging in voter suppression. It's always Republicans whining about pledges not to do recounts. It's always Republicans breaking our brains not to have recounts, not to have as fraud-proof a means of voting as possible, not to honor the founding documents... it's always Republicans trying to turn America fascist, bellowing of their patriotism while trying their hardest to tear down the Constitution.

... Ronald Wieck said...

"Al Franken has gained ALL 100 votes--every one of them--"found" in a heavily Democratic precinct"

Ah! You mean the one where the precinct report was a typo that said "24" votes for Franken instead of the actual "124" votes for Franken!

Clever, that Franken, clever... who else would have thought of reducing his own actual vote count by 100 and risking his election just to drive you nuts...

"in defiance of the mathematical laws that govern the universe"

I do not think that phrase means what you think it means....

Meanwhile Norm Coleman is taking no chances with laws... mathematical, universal, or Illinois constitutional. He filed to shut down the canvass

Bush vs. Gore shut down a recount... Coleman just said wants the first count shutdown while he's ahead.

Coleman's a true believer in the democratic process you betcha!

Judge told Coleman to stuff it, and the actual counting of the actual votes continues... and then the recount.

http://firedoglake.com/2...n-minnesota-senate-race/

it is totally absurd that the only way that a republican candidate can win is if they win by a landslide in order to make up ground for the 3 to 5% margin of theft.

my guess is that absentee mail-in ballots and provisionals were also not uniformly counted.

Sorry, Zapkitty, your imagination doesn't square with the published reports:

http://www.startribune.c...Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUX

The left-blogosphere's fantasies about Republican vote fraud in 2004 were shown to be innumerate nonsense.

"Sorry, Zapkitty, your imagination doesn't square with the published reports:"

Wow... your referenced article concentrates on the timestamps angle of the story instead of the typo, but does not conflict with the typo story... a story that was also published elsewhere... and the source of your claim to violations of "mathematical laws that govern the universe" is...

"Obviously, this is highly suspicious. They found 100 votes, and it's statistically impossible that all 100 votes went to the two Democrats, even in St. Louis County," said Cullen Sheehan, Coleman's campaign manager.

... Coleman's campaign manager?

Another version of the typo account to amuse you...
http://www.kare11.com/ne...icle.aspx?storyid=528970

"The left-blogosphere's fantasies about Republican vote fraud in 2004 were shown to be innumerate nonsense."

Strange, for someone talking about other's fantasies your declarations seem to be remarkably detached from reality in and of themselves.

"Were shown to be innumerate nonsense"... by who? Coleman's campaign manager? A graduate of the Chicago school of Economics? A budding neotheocon lawyer from Regent's? Hmmm...?

And now currently at the top of Bradblog:

"Rightwing Conspiracy Theory Bloggers Don Tinfoil Hats for Franken/Coleman U.S. Senate Race in MN"

https://bradblog.com/?p=6649

The loony-left's fantasies about the 2004 election were reduced to rubble by DEMOCRATIC pollster Mark Blumenthal. See "Was RFK, Jr. Right About the Exit Polls?, parts I, II, and III" on pollster.com, a superb resource for anyone interested in polling and statistics.

We await further developments in the Coleman-Franken recount with amusement, but we still haven't ever heard a rational explanation for the uncanny success of Democratic candidates in such matters. Maybe they're just very lucky.

Ronald

RFK Jr's article was not premised solely on exit poll data; Blumenthal's skirting of the true implications of the veracity of the exit polls doesn't make your case. In fact, maybe it would help you to read the other points he's making in that series that show there is every reason to believe Ohio was stolen in 2004. And that some Democrats prefer to believe our elections are not rigged over the results of exit polls does not detract from the fact that exit polls are historically incredibly accurate and give a meaningful indication of when lucid people should indeed suspect foul play. Your apparent lack of critical thinking skills is beginning to look more like an attempt to snare people who lack them too. We frown on that stuff here.

I bet Coleman would be in favor of a recount if he were 236 votes behind, instead of 236 votes ahead.