Wall Street Journal rushes to aid of Coleman

The WSJ’s opinion page was full of foolishness and duplicity even before Murdoch bought the paper. It’s not a place to go for rational, clear-headed analyses or opinions.

Thanks for writing about the WSJ piece. I read it this morning and it reminded me of being at a ball game, seeing the play, seeing how the official ruled, but then hearing on drive-home radio all the things that did not happen. The WSJ clearly mischaracterized the Canvassing Board. The WSJ is fueling the fire that the election was stolen instead of recognizing that 58 % of Minnesota voters did not want Coleman returned for another term. The recount process has been totally transparent and the rulings have all come from the MN Supreme Court which as you state is dominated by Republican appointed justices.

IMO, Coleman has a valid point that the 133 missing ballots should not be counted if all the other counts have been substantiated. But now that is beyond the margin of difference.
Also, IMO, the instructions from the MN Supreme Court that allowed the Coleman and Franken teams to decide which errorounously rejected ballots is truly bizarre … but since the camps have now accepted those ballots, it is too late to complain now that they know how the votes favored Franken,

The small number of now-accepted (previously errorounously rejected) absentee ballots moved the yardstick that much farther out for Coleman. IF anyone was ever permitted to look at all the thousands of rejected absentee ballots is the only way that we will know who truly prevailed. (”Prevail” since neither Franken or Coleman should say they won when 58% of the people did not want them.)

There is no way in this modern day of electronics for a person to have a 700+ vote lead by voters, then a 200+ vote deficit conducted by subjective individuals. Any and all individuals that are found to have purposely manipulated this outcome should be prosecuted and jailed if necessary.

I am from New York. That means I have no particular feelings either pro or con Minnesota, its candidates or its politics. My primary interest is that elections be decided by voters, not counters. Not justin Minnesota but nation-wide. I read the WSJ editorial too. After the election was over, the WSJ says that Coleman had one by about 700 votes. Later that margin became much smaller. Enter the counters. Now, according to the counters, Senator Coleman has not won the election at all. Instead the victor is Mr. Franken. That is OK withme, so long as the recount is fair and accurate. Yet according to the WSJ in about 23 Minnesota precincts there are more ballots in existence than there were actual voters. Can this be TRUE? On the face of it,if true, this result is not just ridiculous. It is preposterous. And the cancassing board, whose credentials you so admire, is not troubled, apparently. Their answer is “take it to court.” Our democracy is huilt on votes and accurate counts. This so-called recount looks mighty odd to me.

Stoddard– Good Question. No, WSJ just makes things up. Source: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/did-wall-street-jorunal-fire-their-fact.html

I’m from Minnesota and have watched this recount closely. You neglect to mention that virtually every procedural decision made by the canvassing board head, Mark Ritchie(D) benefited Franken. The biggest decision was whether to include absentee votes in the recount at all. Originally,Ritchie ruled this was a matter for the courts based on Colemans’s objection that there were no uniform sorting standards county to county. He then reversed this and instructed all of the counties to begin sorting absentee ballots and included only counties that chose to participate. Many counties did not particpate based on legal advice from their own legal counsel.

Regarding the star tribune, you write”The Star Tribune editorial board, which was as enthusiastic about Coleman as the WSJ during campaign season, praised the recount process,”.
As soon as the recount started and became a partisan issue the Tribune quickly took sides with Franken , with partisan, biased reporting that made Coleman look like he was “trying not to count all the votes” when in fact he was trying to create uniform and fair standards on the absentee ballots and disputing double counted votes.

The real issue in my mind was a 500 vote lead that coleman had which was erased in a period of days Nov 5 to the start of the recount. I believe this was where fraud occurred and allowed recount Ritchie to close the gap further with subtle moves and rulings in Franken’s favor. A statistical analysis of the precincts that manufactured? these new “after nov 4 but before the recount” votes showed a severe disproportionnate increase ijn votes for Franken but not Obama or other democrats. The other problem was the ballot recount acceptance standards allowed ballots to be counted that could easily have been doctored after Nov. 4. where “voter intent” was determined.

Thetruth,
You know just about enough about this process to indicate you are being somewhat intentionally disingenuous.
1) All of the counties separated the absentee ballots. They were separated into 5 pools, 4 pools represented valid reasons that a ballot could be disqualified and the fifth represented the pool determined for those that were incorrectly disqualified. In other words, the fifth pool was votes that were not counted. All counties did the sorting.
2) Coleman did not want any of the disqualified absentee ballots to count. There are emails on the web of his council adamant about that.
3) The Tribune endorsed Coleman. The only side they took was common sense.
4) The 500 vote change in the days after Nov 4 was not contested by Coleman, and still is not. Much of that was correspondence error and is well documented. For example, 28,345 for Coleman in a given area was reported as 28,534. Anyone with even a remedial understanding of statistics would know that with 3 million votes cast in hundreds of centers, a swing of 500 based on correspondence error is actually quite low. There is no correlation, or implied correlation, for adjustments between Obama and Franken in such a case.
Nice try though.

Reality,

I’m glad you have convinced yourself that you have it all figured out. Why should anyone believe your interpretation of the recount process? “The Tribune endorsed Coleman”. So what? As soon as it became a hotly contested , partisan race they slanted to Franken in all of their reportage. Are you trying to tell me the Tribune, is fair and balanced? Give me a break.

“Anyone with even a remedial understanding of statistics would know that with 3 million votes cast in hundreds of centers, a swing of 500 based on correspondence error is actually quite low”
Your less than remedial understanding of statistics is evident. The statistical anomaly is that the bulk of the swing came from a precinct in St. Louis county and that statistically , the expected increase in votes for Obama did not occur in the same region. How does the Colman campaign contest manufactured votes that occurred through doctored ballots and “malfunctioning” ballot reading machines?You don’t even understand the issue .