Election

If only they’d used washable markers.

Norm Coleman’s campaign this morning asked the judges in Minnesota’s Senate election contest trial to stop the secretary of state’s office from marking out numbers on 933 absentee ballots that link them to the envelopes in which they arrived. But state workers have already blacked out almost all of the numbers.

UPDATE: The Secretary of State’s office now says half of the ballots remain unredacted.

Your Honors, I object. Today’s Pioneer Press editorial, using mock-trial lingo, declares, “This election is a tie” and calls for “a do-over election as the only way to pick a true winner” in the Senate contest that has Norm Coleman still trailing Al Franken. The timing of the PiPress’ abrupt change of heart is highly suspect, coming [...]

In separate e-mails sent almost simultaneously this evening, Al Franken and former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman offered takes on President Obama’s inauguration as diametrically opposed in style as the Senate contenders are opposed in their rival campaigns. Franken’s is an unadorned, even bland two-paragraph statement about the honor he felt at attending the inauguration and [...]

Norm Coleman’s lawyers said today they might ask a three-judge panel to open every absentee ballot that was rejected in Minnesota’s contested Senate election. That would be about 12,000 ballots, or nearly 10 times the 1,350 that the state Canvassing Board examined during a recount that left Al Franken with a 225-vote lead.

You’ve probably heard and read a lot about Minnesota voters whose absentee ballots got rejected and how those non-votes might affect the incredibly close U.S. Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. But have you heard even one word yet from those voters?

“Oh, crap.”

Well, now you’ve heard two words.

Voting was heavy across the University of Minnesota’s campus-area precincts in Minneapolis today — and so were the arms of young people at almost every corner, waving signs that were mostly of one description: Obama for President. At Marcy Open School in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood where students mix with plain folks, the line to vote stretched out the door. There and at Coffman Memorial Union on the U of M campus, many university students took advantage of Minnesota’s same-day voting law to cast their first ballots for president. Here’s the video, after the jump — and don’t drink every time you see a sign.

Having Election Day jitters? Problems with touch-screen voting have already been reported in West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas, and a video (after the jump) of an election official in West Virginia demonstrating a machine that just so happens to be seriously malfunctioning and flipping votes while he’s trying to showcase its validity is circling the web today. Now voters want to take action by documenting their own experiences at the voter booth, and a joint project with PBS and YouTube called “Video Your Vote” is starting to gain serious attention.

But can you film at the polls here in Minnesota? Sort of.

Much has been made of America’s belt-tightening due to the 8 percent increase in grocery bills this year caused by rising food costs. There are stories about the recession diet. Stories about middle-class Americans hoarding rice and flour they purchased at a suburban Costco.  And stories about urban garden virgins collaborating to give birth to [...]

Remember back in 2004 when the nebulous concept of “moral values” took top priority with voters, according to exit polls, and the economy was of primary concern for only 18 percent of voters?

My, how times have changed. According to a recent Gallup poll, 35 percent of voters believe the economy is the top issue facing [...]

A couple months ago, street artist/designer Shepard Fairey debuted his limited-edition Barack Obama prints on his Web site. Like everything else Fairey has done (including honest-to-goodness marketing campaigns for corporate giants Pepsi and such) the series of Obama posters took inspiration from Fairey’s “Andre the Giant”/”Obey” anti-campaign he’s famous for: shadowy, graphic, three-tone images that [...]