“The recount has not even started in Minnesota and somehow Al Franken has already shaved nearly 500 votes off the incumbent lead.” So said Sean Hannity on Fox’s Hannity & Holmes yesterday, in a segment featuring Gov. Tim Pawlenty. While Pawlenty pointed out concerns about “statistical irregularities” in the changing vote tally in the race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, he repeatedly said there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. Still, Hannity continued questioning that: “Is the fix in? … Do you suspect cheating is going on?”

What Hannity — and to a lesser degree, Pawlenty — fail to acknowledge is the history of vote tallies changing pre-certification. And both pass on the lie that Minneapolis’ election director found, as Hannity erroneously puts it, “32 absentee ballots hiding in the trunk of her car — all of them conveniently going to Al Franken.”

“In Minnesota, we don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing, but these patterns that you just described causes us concerns,” said Pawlenty, but Hannity would have none of it.

“What about 32 absentee ballots all going to Franken — every one of them?!”

Then Pawlenty: “Finding 32 ballots in the trunk of the car and supposedly forgetting they’re there, that’s a problem.”

But as MinnPost’s David Brauer reported yesterday: the story of the 32 absentee ballots is flat wrong. He called up Minneapolis election director Cindy Reichert to get the facts. She (Pawlenty during two Fox appearances in as many days called her “he”) attests the car-ballot story is “just not true”: She never had the ballots in her car — nor were they in anyone’s car for several days — and they were kept in secure facilities between election day and vote counting. It was Coleman’s attorney, Fritz Knaak, who told reporters, “We were actually told ballots had been riding around in her car for several days, which raised all kinds of integrity questions.” From there, the Wall Street Journal picked up on it and reported it as fact; similar to Hannity’s on-screen graphic (shown above), the error appeared in a story headlined “Mischief in Minnesota?”

But according to Brauer, Hannity is wrong on another count: “every one of” those 32 ballots did not go to Franken. Franken won half, 18 16, seven were cast for Coleman, and the remainder went to other candidates.

Finally, during his Reality Check segment last night, WCCO’s Pat Kessler makes the point that wild swings in vote counts prior to Election Board certification “is what happens in Minnesota elections. We just don’t pay attention when the race isn’t close.” In the Senate race between Coleman and DFLer Walter Mondale, Coleman gained 54,429 votes and Mondale 63,192 votes between Election Day and the day the tally was certified. (For more historical perspective on gains for Franken, see Chris Steller’s recent piece on 1962’s Minnesota gubernatorial race.)

Tim Pawlenty on “Hannity & Colmes,” Fox, Nov. 12, 2008