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The recount is over — kinda, sorta almost. The final precincts were counted in Wright County today and Al Franken’s campaign claims that he currently holds a four-vote lead over Sen. Norm Coleman.
Those figures are significantly different from other counts maintained by various media outlets that continue to show the Republican maintaining a 200-plus vote lead. That’s because the Franken campaign includes in its tally the more than 6,000 ballots that have been challenged by either campaign, relying on the initial judgment of local election officials on which candidate a voter intended to support. “It assumes that every challenge lodged by both campaigns will fail,” said Marc Elias, the lead recount attorney for the Franken campaign at a press conference today.
But even if the Franken campaign’s data proves to be more accurate than other counts, there are a couple of issues that continue to cloud the ultimate outcome. Most significantly 133 ballots cast in Minneapolis remain missing. Election officials, along with the Secretary of State’s office, are currently scouring a warehouse to locate the AWOL ballots. “I am more confident now than ever that they will be found,” Elias said. “They are conducting a diligent search, a thorough search.” (The Franken campaign’s count relies on the assumption that these ballots will ultimately be included in the recount.)
In addition, Minnesota Public Radio reported earlier today that additional, uncounted ballots have been found at the Minneapolis warehouse. Elias, however, did not have any information about that development. “I don’t know the nature of them,” he said. “If there are absentee ballots that have not been counted … they ought to be.”
The Franken campaign also sent out letters to election officials in all 87 counties today calling on them to include wrongly rejected absentee ballots in their final vote tallies. Earlier this week the Secretary of State’s Office directed local officials to sort rejected absentee ballots into five piles, indicating either the reason that the ballot was disqualified or that no proper standard was utilized in throwing out the vote. “Let me be clear: improperly rejected absentee ballots are simply another way of saying uncounted absentee ballots,” Elias said.
At a hearing last week the statewide canvassing board, charged with overseeing the recount process, refused to consider improperly rejected absentee ballots, ruling that it was outside the five-member panel’s jurisdiction. However, the group did seek advice from the Attorney General’s office on the issue and will revisit it next Friday. The canvassing board is slated to begin examining challenged ballots on December 16.
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4 Comments »
Comment posted December 5, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
Please. Whether Franken or Coleman wins, this has to highlight the poor execution of our voting systems, not only in Minnesota but in the entire country. If this does not light a fire underneath elections officials to get things resolved prior to the next election, then apathy is truly the winner.
Comment posted December 6, 2008 @ 12:03 am
I’m not convinced there’s a systemic problem. It seems the missing ballots are a matter of someone not following a procedure, not the procedure itself. The exceptions are the challenge procedure, which is open to abuse, and the rejection of absentee ballots. Mistakes are going to happen, so there’s a hole with how disqualified voters are informed and allowed to resolve it. Otherwise, may I remind everyone that the fight in Florida was over whether there would be a recount at all, what would get counted, and what the standards would be. All those things were already established in Minnesota, plus we have all paper ballots which make recounts possible, and scanners have a much lower error rate than punchcards.
Comment posted December 7, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
i am sick and tired of all of the whiners who assert that the system is broken. it seems to me, that the system is working as it should. we will look at all of the actual ballots, and, a relatively bi-partisan, canvassing board will make a final determination on suspect ballots. the system is working, too bad it is taking a little time to finally decide the winner. unlike florida, all of the ballots will be counted and there should be no cloud over the winner, whomever it is.
Comment posted December 12, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Just a couple things that I would like to comment on.
First, whiners?! Keith, I don’t think that it’s whining to consider that this system needs to be reviewed. You’re right in saying that the system is working, but look at all of the things that have gone wrong up to this point. The faulty rejections of ballots on both sides of the ticket, the mishandling of ballots by election officials, and my personal favorite: the loss of the 133 votes by my fellow Minnesotans in the Dinkytown area. I don’t think that an expectation of better practices and procedural enforcement is whining. I think that this is not only acceptable and normal, but I would expect nothing less.
Second, I would like to address the additional, previously uncounted ballots. This is truly a shocker for me. It makes me wonder two things. The first being, what the hell are they using this warehouse for when not for this function? The second is this? How are they really handling our votes, because it seems to me that they were simply tossing the boxes of votes over a railing or something and let them fall where they may.
I don’t think that a cloud will hang over the winner, and I don’t think that this is something that will threaten to divide the state into a North Minnesota and South Minnesota. But I do think that the taste that this is leaving in many peoples mouths does warrant a review and possible changes to our voting process.
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