This could be our next senator.
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posted by Bob at Sunday, December 21, 2008
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
Please click onto the COMMENTS for the story.
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11 Comments:
What will it take to declare a winner?
There's no clear line, but big steps are likely this week
By Rachel E. Stassen-Berger
rstassen-berger@pioneerpress.com
Article Last Updated: 12/20/2008 09:43:30 PM CST
To help you sort through things, here are some questions and answers:
Q Who is going to win?
A It is hard to say at this point.
The week saw a reversal in fortunes, however.
Since Nov. 5, Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman has had the lead in publicly available counts.
But last week, the state canvassing board — made of up Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Justice G. Barry Anderson of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin and Assistant Chief Judge Edward Cleary from Ramsey County — judged more than 1,300 challenged ballots.
When they were through, Democrat Al Franken had a lead of 260 votes, according to Pioneer Press calculations.
Still, Coleman campaign officials said Coleman would be the victor in the end.
Q Haven't all the challenged ballots been counted?
A No, not yet.
The canvassing board spent more than 30 hours last week evaluating ballots.
They judged a ballot that had Brett Favre written in for president (that ballot counted), a ballot that had "Lizard People" written in for Senate (that ballot didn't) and several ballots that had policy and political statements written on them (those tended to count).
The campaigns may have 10 to 20 more challenged ballots that were missed during that process, which the board will judge Tuesday.
But there still are more to award.
Challenged ballots are the votes that either the Franken or Coleman campaign questioned during the three-week-long hand recount, which ended Dec. 5.
At the end of that process, there were 6,655 challenges.
In the ensuing weeks, both campaigns withdrew many of their challenges, but the votes on the rest of the challenged-but-withdrawn ballots — about 5,200 of them — have yet to be awarded.
Franken attorney Marc Elias said Saturday that when those ballots are included in the count, Franken would be ahead by 35 to 50 votes.
Q When will those 5,000-plus votes be awarded?
A This weekend and early next week, staffers from the secretary of state's office will be sorting through and awarding the votes on those ballots. On Tuesday, the canvassing board will meet again to reveal the results.
Q How will the staffers know to whom those votes belong?
A During the hand recount, local elections officials made a determination about who — Franken, Coleman or "other" — should get the votes. The "other" pile includes votes for any candidate except Franken and Coleman, as well as any invalid ballot, such as ballots on which voters purposely identified themselves.
The state elections staffers will simply award the votes to whomever the local elections officials did.
Q So, all ballots will be awarded early next week?
A No, there are still 1,500 or more absentee ballots that elections judges mistakenly rejected that still need to be counted.
Q When will those votes be counted?
A The Coleman campaign complained about counting those votes and asked the state Supreme Court to settle the issue. On Thursday, the court said all counties should report the votes on those ballots by Dec. 31. After that, the state canvassing board will include those votes in the master tally.
Q Are counties counting those votes right now?
A Not quite yet.
The Supreme Court also ordered, essentially, that the Coleman and Franken campaigns would have to agree on which of those absentee ballots should be included in the count.
The two campaigns agreed on very little during the two-year campaign, but representatives for both have said they should be able to agree on the absentee ballots — eventually.
Q What happens if they don't agree?
A That's not quite clear.
The court raised the specter of sanctions if the campaigns were unable to come to an agreement, but it is not clear what those sanctions would be.
Q Is that the only court dispute?
A No, on Friday the canvassing board decided to include in its count ballots that the Coleman campaign said could have been double-counted. The Franken campaign says no votes were double-counted and all votes should be counted.
Almost immediately after the board decided, the Coleman campaign brought a suit to the Supreme Court over the issue.
Q How many votes does the Coleman campaign think were double-counted and how?
A The campaign believes there are at least 130 votes that were counted twice in the recount.
On Election Day, local elections officials make duplicates of ballots when the original is too damaged to be read by voting machines. Both ballots are supposed to be clearly labeled.
But during the recount, originals sometimes could not be matched with their duplicates.
The campaigns agreed to include the originals in the recount — but matched with their duplicates. Because some duplicates could not be found or were not properly labeled, the Coleman campaign believes both were included in the recount tally.
Q What does the campaign want done?
A The Coleman campaign made a series of requests to the Supreme Court:
Don't let the canvassing board certify the election results until the duplicates issue is resolved.
Force each campaign to list every instance where duplicates and originals are not reconciled.
Make all counties confirm that their recount totals couldn't possibly include any double-counting.
Require counties to exclude any originals that cannot be matched to duplicates.
Q When will that issue be resolved?
A The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the issue Tuesday. You should be able to view a live webcast of the hearing at mncourts.gov.
The court tends to decide election questions quickly. The court decided the absentee ballot question the day after the hearing on that issue.
But the court's decision could further delay a final result.
Q OK, so let me get this straight. How many categories of ballots are still in dispute?
A Five.
1) The 5,200 unawarded, withdrawn challenged ballots that are being counted this weekend and early next week. The resolution on those should be clear Tuesday when the state canvassing board meets.
2) The 10 to 20 challenged ballots that were missed last week. Those will be decided Tuesday as well.
3) The maybe 130 allegedly double-counted ballots. There'll be a Supreme Court hearing on those Tuesday. Their ultimate fate is unknown, but the canvassing board will include the votes in its tally Tuesday.
4) The possibly 1,500 to 1,600 mistakenly rejected absentee ballots. Those are supposed to be counted by counties by Dec. 31.
5) Any other ballots the campaigns choose to fight about.
Q So, will we know who wins this year?
A With all the directions the recount has moved into and the Dec. 31 deadline for counties to report on their absentee ballots, it looks very unlikely.
Even after all the current issues are solved and the canvassing board certifies a winner, the losing campaign still could file an election contest in court — and that could hold things up for a while.
Dave Orrick contributed to this report.
Scream all you want, but I for one am totally shocked as to how few screwed up ballots there were. A few thousands out of all of the millions cast is pretty amazing.
When this thing started I would have bet on 10 times as many screw ups and an 80/20 break in favor of Franken since those most likely to make mistakes are, poor, seniors and first time voters, all more likely to vote DFL.
So, this has been amazingly close. With very few to recount.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
A guy who graduated from Harvard and went on to become very successful in his career who was actually raised here, could be our next Senator.
Sounds fine.
Eric
Read the Briefs also online pdf files
http://www.mncourts.gov/?page=3409
This is another Florida, probably will go to US Supreme Court and or US Senate
Al Franken, you got my vote.
Norm Coleman has done little of anything for the state of Minnesota either at the state level or in Washington.
What he has done, is stand by the Bush administrations failed policys and when popularity poles came out, he distanced himself from Bush just like many other Republicans.
Hypocrite !
Jeff Matiatos
Thanks Bob for the opprotunity to speak my mind here.
My feelings about Norm Coleman are strictly politically aimed, and are not intended as a personal attack to his family or his character in general.
Jeff Matiatos
Jeff,
Do you really know what you are saying?
The difference between Norm and Al is like night and day.
I know Norm very well. Norm has served our state very well like he did as mayor of St. Paul.
Al is not up to the task of representing Minnesota.
I was also a friend of Paul Welstone and Norm was 100% better than Paul.
If the DFL is allowed to take this election with all their funny business with the recount, who vote then? Our vote does not count anyway, as the DFL continues to dominate local government, state government and federal government.
As far as the recount is concerned, Coleman would not have conceded had he been in Frankens shoes.
I do not care for Colemans switching of parties once Bush got elected.
Why did he do that ?
Of course it's easy to say Coleman and Franken are like night and day because Franken has never had a chance to show Minnesotans what he can do.
Alot of jobs left Minnesota while Coleman was in office and little was done to get jobs back.
Minnesota is in a sad state of economy and so are other states but voting for the war in Iraq has been the costliest venture this country has ever been saddled with.
I suppose Coleman wants to continue this war of nothing when we haven't had a terrorist attack in this country since 9/11 !!
Coleman and the likes of him continue to adhere to the messages of the Bush administrations wanting to scare the American public that we are in grave danger due to terrorism !
There is so much more crime in this country that doesnt get the attention of our government.
Bullshit I say and Isreal is just a puppet country that we use as a means of having an excuse to invade other middleastern countrys to further our national interests in OIL !
Bush is a crimminal and a murderer !
Jeff Matiatos
I'm not too excited about either one. If Coleman did not have the funding questions at election time, he would be in for sure.
I just read the story on yahoo news about how secratary rice has gotten hundereds of thousands of dollars in jewlery gifts from the kings of Saudia Arabia.
To bad she can't keep them !
I guess they go to the archives so I would like to know how I an send Bush a gift.
Anybody want to chip in ?
I didn't think so.
Guess I changed my mind.
Jeff Matiatos
I know Norm very well. Norm has served our state very well like he did as mayor of St. Paul.
By cutting jobs and using the bonding process as a personal pet project bank- instead of paying for certain projects? Putting a debt on us we're still feeling today?
Al is not up to the task of representing Minnesota.
You said you knew Norm, not Al. Al has earned a chance to show what he can do. If he does as well or worse than Norm, then he can join him in private sector.
I was also a friend of Paul Welstone and Norm was 100% better than Paul.
Nobody who knew Paul, (which I really did) would say that. Since we won't hear how Norm is better from you. I'll spell it out how Paul was.
---
*First- Paul voted against the War in Iraq.
*In the Senate, he led legislative battles to make health care more accessible and affordable, and won workers protection to take time from work to care for their families without losing their jobs.
*He helped raise the minimum wage, successfully fought to protect seniors' pension funds from corporate raiders(Enron anybody?), and authored historic ethics and lobbying reform measures that forever changed how the people's business is done on Capitol Hill.
*Wellstone expanded health care coverage for those suffering from mental illness, and worked with Republicans to write a new farm bill.
*He fought for and secured federal resources for Minnesota schools, and worked tirelessly on behalf of veterans, passing legislation to aid homeless veterans and securing compensation for "atomic veterans" suffering from cancers due to radiation exposure during their military service.
*He was a leader in efforts to combat violence against women. In 2000, Wellstone joined with conservative Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) to pass historic bipartisan legislation to prevent international sex trafficking of women and girls, establishing first-ever penalties for those who enslave and traffic in persons.
---
List what Norm has done for us or this country. Or, shut up.
If the DFL is allowed to take this election with all their funny business with the recount, who vote then? Our vote does not count anyway, as the DFL continues to dominate local government, state government and federal government.
7:05 PM
The recount is the law. The steps are both constitutional and ethical.
Minnesota swings back and forth on Democrats and Republicans. The DFL has not dominated anything. The republicans had control and did such a horrible job that the voters bounced their asses out in 2006. Up until Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly, conservatives could still get elected in St Paul.
If you really think there was no difference between the two, you're blind and in denial. Even Bill Dahn knows there's a big difference.
Eric
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