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I have tried to stay clear of reporting on the Minnesota recount given that this blog is more devoted to North Dakota issues, not Minnesota issues. I have to finally ring in on the issue here. Norm Coleman has little to no chance of winning at this point. The only way he can win is by working to skew the wrongly rejected absentee ballots in his direction. Here is how that fiasco has gone down. (Note:I take my information from theuptake.org, fivethirtyeight.com, and startribune.com) On December 18th, the Minnesota Supreme court bowed to the Coleman campaign's request that there be a “process” established for determining the status of improperly rejected absentee ballots. Forget the fact that there is already a set of guidelines for what defines a properly rejected absentee ballot(e.g. Minnesota election law). One would think that county election judges could simply sift through their absentee ballots and determine if any ballot was rejected for any reason other than what the statutes provide for, then count the ballots and amend their results. The Supreme Court instead decided to make things ten times more complicated than this simple process. They decided(read the full decision here) that both campaigns needed to agree with election officials as to what constituted an improperly rejected absentee ballot. Those ballots would then be counted. The people whose ballots were rejected would be notified, and given time to appeal the decision in court. There would also be “sanctions” for a campaign that attempted to get ballots rejected for frivolous reasons. Norm appears to be on the road to getting “sanctioned”. Yesterday it was reported that while the Franken campaign and local election officials had agreed to 1346 ballots, that Coleman's attorneys had agreed to exactly 136. Those presumably were the 10% or so of the ballots located in Coleman-friendly counties. The attorneys reportedly said that they would release a list with “lots, lots more” later on--lets hope so... Today we got word of what “lots, lots more” meant... -778 absentee ballots OPENED on the basis of recommendations from local election officials.
-544 absentee ballots LOOKED at more closely before they are opened (or not)
-67 absentee ballots OPENED that are not currently on the list from local election officials
-587 absentee ballots LOOKED at more closely before they are opened (or not) that are not currently on the list from local election officials.
Note that 778 plus 544 does not equal the total of 1,346 absentee ballots released by local election officials. Tony Trimble, Coleman recount laywer, said today they have not rejected opening any absentee ballot yet so the discrepancy accounts for absentee ballots they have not yet reviewed. Understand that they don't have gobs of time to do this. The election officials and campaigns have all of six days(including today) to complete this process. They need to be completely wrapped up by the 4th. I would give Coleman the benefit of the doubt that he's trying to be thorough(even though he has had 11 days so far to review these ballots), except for the fact that Norm's people have been the ones dragging their feet on the recount from the beginning. Lets start with this statement from November 5th: "Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed," Coleman said Wednesday at a news conference. He noted Franken could opt to waive the recount. "It's up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct," Coleman said, telling reporters he would "step back" if he were in Franken's position Yeah, just waive a state-mandated recount in the closest senate race in Minnesota history(with a victory margin of only 8 thousandths of a percent)...sure... Then came the whining over the trailing results that shifted ever-so-slightly prior to the recount(something completely normal in any election), where Coleman questioned why they were leaning towards Franken... Then came the actual recount, where out of the 6700+ challenges, Coleman increased the number of challenges first, had more by the time the hand recount had finished, and withdrew fewer challenges only in response to the Franken campaign, ending up with nearly twice as many challenges being placed before the canvassing board, on top of that, every lawsuit so far associated with this recount has been filed by the Coleman campaign. Now, when the Coleman people know that the absentee ballots are going to push the numbers toward Franken, wouldn't you know it, they are yet again being childish. Its time for Coleman to grow up and cooperate. In reality, the Minnesota Supreme Court should never have given either campaign the opportunity to prevent any absentee ballot from being considered. It pretty much invited the endless squabbling we're seeing now. If the Coleman people insisted on giving their input in the process then they should have implemented a similar process to the rest of the recount. Give each campaign the option to challenge a rejection and take them to the canvassing board, which would have the final say on each rejection. It seems that this whole process is bound to end up back in the courts, and it continues to remain a possibility to appeal the decision to the U.S. Senate itself, as ridiculous as that seems. Coleman does not seem to be doing himself a whole lot of good, and is not generating any goodwill here. In reality though, Coleman has little to lose(only a small amount of PR that he can make strides in regaining over the next six years--I mean, Saxby Chambliss and George Bush got re-elected...), and plenty to gain by attempting to game the system to his advantage. Franken has the exact same risk/reward ratio here as well if things end up turning south for him, although he has some amount of breathing room to work with(exactly 50 votes worth—and counting) before his lawyers slam their briefcases down on the desks. One can always hope for civility though I guess...
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