Comments on: Star Tribune ‘does it right’ with Ballot Challenge

By: lenzy1000

lenzy1000 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:22:54 +0000

It still hasn’t been corrected at the Trib or Factcheck. If you go here
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/01/mining-the-minnesota-recount/ under the Partisanship section the say some votes were awarded for Coleman while some were not. This is the ballot in question http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/index.php?review_date=2008-12-16&index=25 The Trib claims this ballot went for no one but if you download the spreadsheet of challenged ballots, you will see that Franken withdrew the challenge and the vote was awarded to Coleman. I supplied Factcheck with the proof but they never changed their claim. The Trib did correct most of their other errors which made for embarassing moments for Lott. The trib would post an incorrect call, Lott would post proof of bias, someone contacted the Trib and corrected the errors, making Lott look foolish because his links had changed and now disproved his claims.

By: Paul Schmelzer

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:08:18 +0000

They made a mistake with the Ballot Challenge that went uncorrected for a long time? I wasn’t aware of that. I’ve got my issues with the Strib, but I think they did a good job with this feature, and the entire process (much like the UpTake’s live streams of the proceedings) benefited from the transparency.

By: lenzy1000

lenzy1000 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:49:11 +0000

They did it right, most of the time. When they made mistakes they were slow to correct them causing people like John Lott to run around making claims that the canvasing board was biased. Even Factcheck.org is still linking to the ballot challenge of proof of bias. They have a claim that some ballots with an X crossed out were awarded to Franken while the same were not awarded to Coleman. The link at the Trib still shows the vote as rejected when in fact, the challenge was withdrawn and the vote was awarded to Coleman. They also made the same mistake as the Coleman camp in publishing personal info on the absentee ballots without redacting the info.