UNDERVOTES.

SPOILED VOTES.

If you want a real redux of the Florida 2000, it is that the Franken team doesn't seem to be looking at the votes NEVER COUNTED IN THE FIRST PLACE (except for absentee).

I can guess that if the average of 3-5% holds true, there are upwards of 90,000 votes that are waiting to be counted, and I'm betting that they would swing for Franken 65-35%. Why? Becausea traditionally, spoiled and voided ballots are Democratic ballots and POOR people ballots.

If the Franken team is making the same mistake that Gore made and just looking at the UNDERCOUNT, then they DESERVE TO BE CHEATED, plain and simple.

If, after 8 years and multiple books by brilliant minds like Marc Crispin Miller and Greg Pallast and Steve Friedman and Fitrakis/Wasserman (please excuse my spelling) and others, the Franken team still doesn't GET it, then they don't deserve a U.S. Senate seat.

And yet, I have not heard a single word about the TENS OF THOUSANDS of voided and spoiled ballots that we KNOW are out there, and will be discussed six months or a year from now when this piddling little vote-by-vote argument has been put to bed.

Brad,

Just called the Franken HQ and Coleman's margin is reduced to 84 votes as of 20 minutes ago, this includes challanged ballots.

They have filed a request to see the rejected ballots but this is in the hands of the court to decide and with the Thanksgiving holiday, the courts may take awhile to make a decision about giving access to the actual physical ballots that have been "spoiled" or "rejected".

There remains 20% of the votes to be counted by hand for the recount, this will probably be done by Monday at the latest.

The race boils down to which ballots get counted, and how they get counted.

No one knows exactly how many ballots are spoiled and haven't been counted. there are alot of unknowns in this recount.

Thanks 'john harris' for that info. I also think those spoiled and rejected ballots are crucial to this race (and probably races all across the country that we'll never know about) and need to be revisited. I hope they demand to see those ballots and make appropriate challenges to their invalidation through as many levels of court revie as necessary.

Happy Thanksgiving. GO AL!

Very interesting report, Brad. Ken Karan's point is so well taken. If I weren't chary about the need to dot I's and cross T's on provisionals, I would say that such voters should be allowed to vote provisionally and a mechanism for providing supporting evidence of their signature change should be created.

I do think there is a space between "I am trying to do my job right and I really can't recognize this signature as a match," and "this is clearly NOT the person." Creating a way forward to close that gap would be a good thing. Many of our laws and regulations depend at the end of the day on the common sense (or not) and good judgment (or not) of those in charge of our polling places. A rejected signature in one place is not the same signature necessarily that would be rejected in another --- probably we should not leave it so completely to idiosyncratic or arbitrary, untrained judgments.

Arbitrary signature verification should be eliminated as a means of "balancing" turnout in an election. Signature verification does serve a purpose and imho should not be thrown out (I have visions of a group of undocumented day workers coming in for their day's assignment: to rev up votes for a particular candidate or party).

Regarding the case of Coleman/Franken and the repeated "just a few ballots missing" from precinct to precinct: in Ohio, wasn't the number of votes per precinct that would have changed the outcome of the election for Kerry something like two?

The assumption is that the ballots are missing and not that e.g. the machines were programmed incorrectly. It would be interesting to know if the areas in question were all working from the same ballot design (i.e. no differences in local races) or whether there is a variety of ballots (and therefore programming, I think). If they were all the same, then examining whether other locations with identical ballots had any discrepancy would be interesting.

It would also be interesting to look at Minnesota's past audit results overall and for those particular locations to see if there is a past pattern of losing similar amounts of ballots.

I know of no mechanical flaw or problem that would lead to extra votes being shown as cast (do you?). I am assuming that the pollbook showing voters checked in correlates with the machine tape plus hand counted ballots total rather than the total from the latest all-hand count, right?

I am not real comfortable with ballots "found" as an election goes on --- it raises questions about the quality of controls in the precinct where they were lost in the first place.

I guess the final area I would ask about is whether Minnesota has a set counting protocol or whether each location invents its own. If the latter, what is their method? If the method does not allow for two pairs of eyes to examine each ballot and how it is recorded, then there may be some vulnerabilities to inaccuracy in how they hand counted.

I know Minnesota has done a great deal of work to update and fill out their statutes, regulations, and processes --- more than many other states, to be sure. It is events like this close race that let everyone figure out where things are working and where they can be developed further.

IMHO, elections that breathe --- in which the people continue to examine, question, and provide citizen oversight --- are vital to democracy and CAN help create the best system there can be (if someone is listening and responding with appropriate changes to law/regulations/procedures). Elections where nobody looks, nobody questions, and nobody challenges are the kind that I think can spawn wrongdoing.

Minnesota can only get better as a result of any lessons that may be unearthed and learned in this election recount.

One more factor in the signature verification issue: challenges to absentee ballots or challenges of voters at the polls. It is not just the election official --- it is handling a challenge with a set of tools that lets both parties agree how a challenge may be made and what steps can be taken to counter it. A challenge may be arbitrary or seem that way --- but the response cannot also seem arbitrary.

Finally, the idea of getting the info on the printed ballot total and reconciling would need to be done via an FOI as an independent procedure. If you read Minnesota's recount laws, it is specifically defined as a plain vanilla recount rather than as an investigation into any aspect of procedure.

Subd. 3.Scope of recount.A recount conducted as provided in this section is limited in scope to the determination of the number of votes validly cast for the office to be recounted. Only the ballots cast in the election and the summary statements certified by the election judges may be considered in the recount process

from the 2008 Minnesota recount guide, which is not a law but I am assuming it accurately clarifies the intent of a recount in Minnesota:

11.0 EXAMPLE INSTRUCTIONS
11.1 HAND COUNT INSTRUCTIONS
This is an administrative recount held pursuant to M.S. 204C.35 and M.R. 8235. It is not to determine who
was eligible to vote. It is not to determine if campaign laws were violated. It is not to determine if absentee
ballots were properly accepted. It is not - except for recounting the ballots - to determine if judges did things
right. It is simply to physically recount the ballots for this race! It is an opportunity for everyone, particularly
Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State 7
the losing candidate, to satisfy themselves that ballots were, in fact, counted properly in a close race.
If we find a difference in the vote count, you need to be aware that this is not unusual and that this is why we
have the recount law. Normally any errors by the judges or the machine are random errors and generally offset
one another. Characteristically what we find is that a slight change one way in one precinct is balanced off by a
corresponding change in the other direction in another precinct. Normally the results of the election are not
changed by these adjustments, but it does happen.

Here's the link:
See page 6 for this text.

"It is simply to physically recount the ballots for this race!"

Ballots that were determined to be SPOILED or VOIDED would not have been counted in the first place, and therefor would not be subject to a "recount" unter the above.

Franken will get just what he deserves (cheated out of a Senate seat) because he didn't support and promote the Election Reform movement in 2004 when it mattered.

Karma's a bitch.

CharlieL wrote:

"Franken will get just what he deserves (cheated out of a Senate seat) because he didn't support and promote the Election Reform movement in 2004 when it mattered."
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When votes are not accurately counted, it isn't just the candidate who loses, but democracy itself. When the 2000 election was stolen, it was not simply Al Gore who lost but Americans, and indeed, the world which suffered the consequences.