Counting The Challenges In Mn

[strategy's_touch 0]

That's why he has a problem with filing his taxes?

it's unamerican to pay your taxes, didn't you know?

[JustDoIt 10]

it's unamerican to pay your taxes, didn't you know?

Good Article on this farce!http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470892,00.html

[LongLiveYorke 38]

Good Article on this farce!http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470892,00.html

How do those people who can't fill out a ballot properly even dress themselves in the morning?

[hblask 1]

How do those people who can't fill out a ballot properly even dress themselves in the morning?

First of all, the article in the link was WAY one-sided. I watched a bit of the coverage live, and while I didn't agree with a number of their decisions, there didn't seem to be a pattern to the disagreements. It was mostly on close calls. However, there was discussion about 'a X over an oval, or an oval over an X', which to me meant nothing, but they somehow divined meaning from it. Of the five people judging, I thought one was clearly for Franken, one clearly for Coleman, and three were pretty neutral.Second, this article didn't even show the worst cases. There were a lot of them that were just bizarre. One guy perfectly filled in the oval for Franken, and then made a perfectly filled in oval of the same size for Coleman, except the Coleman one was to the right of his name. Huh? So yeah, I agree, what is wrong with these people that they can't just fill in a circle like we've been doing since, what, first grade? Scribbles, multiple circles, combinations of X's and filling in.... personally, I think the rule should be like the NFL replay rule: if it's not obvious, we can't count it. Unless 99 out of 100 (non-biased) observers agree, the ballot is thrown out. That rule would never fly, of course, because the Dem's wouldn't stand for it. Their voters tended to come from the inner city public schools, and filling out forms correctly isn't their strong suit.One guy had solved math problems on the ballot. WTF?

[LongLiveYorke 38]

One guy had solved math problems on the ballot. WTF?

Oh, yeah, that was me. I got bored.

[akoff 0]

Oh, yeah, that was me. I got bored.

how long was the equation? That would great, maybe next year list your weekend picks with spreads!!!Why don't they just get electronic machines? I mean in PA you don't even fill out a ballot. You walk in, close the curtain, hit the Rep. ticket, all the lights come on, hit vote and have a nice day...like seconds!!

[hblask 1]

how long was the equation? That would great, maybe next year list your weekend picks with spreads!!!Why don't they just get electronic machines? I mean in PA you don't even fill out a ballot. You walk in, close the curtain, hit the Rep. ticket, all the lights come on, hit vote and have a nice day...like seconds!!

Because it is non-auditable and subject to fraud. At least that's the theory. I don't know if that's true or if it's just a political tactic to say those things.

[vbnautilus 48]

Because it is non-auditable and subject to fraud. At least that's the theory. I don't know if that's true or if it's just a political tactic to say those things.

It's possible to make viable open-source voting machines that produce a paper ballot subject to audit. However, the companies who make these things seem unwilling or incapable.

[hblask 1]

It's possible to make viable open-source voting machines that produce a paper ballot subject to audit. However, the companies who make these things seem unwilling or incapable.

Yeah, it seems like it would be a relatively trivial task to create a clear electronic ballot. At the end a thing pops up and says: " This is who you voted for, do you agree?" When they hit "Yes", it says, "We will now print your ballot. Turn it in to the election official." It then prints out a folded ballot for records.Why would this be difficult?In this race, Franken's lead is down to double digits, and the board seems to be making every decision in favor of Franken now. I've thought it was pretty fair all along, but now I'm starting to wonder. Word is that 4 of the 5 are DFL'ers (The MN Democratic party, DFL = Democratic-Farm-Labor, for some reason).

[vbnautilus 48]

Yeah, it seems like it would be a relatively trivial task to create a clear electronic ballot. At the end a thing pops up and says: " This is who you voted for, do you agree?" When they hit "Yes", it says, "We will now print your ballot. Turn it in to the election official." It then prints out a folded ballot for records.Why would this be difficult?In this race, Franken's lead is down to double digits, and the board seems to be making every decision in favor of Franken now. I've thought it was pretty fair all along, but now I'm starting to wonder. Word is that 4 of the 5 are DFL'ers (The MN Democratic party, DFL = Democratic-Farm-Labor, for some reason).

The website you linked in the OP has Franken up by a small amount. When does this process end? How is the final decision made? In other words, is the number official once this recount is over? The electronic voting issue mostly comes down to companies seeking to maintain their hold on the market by implementing proprietary systems that are not transparent, and governments caving to the financial pressures put on them by said companies. Perhaps the most egregious example of such a company is Diebold, who eventually got such a bad rep for their buggy, insecure machines that they changed the name of their voting machine division to Premier Election Solutions. They clearly don't want a paper trail because the paper reveals the inaccuracies in their machines vote-counting. A good summary of the criticisms of them on the PES wikipedia page.

[GWCGWC 83]

why is franken such a bad choice?

He's too "intellectual."Anyone that wrote a book called 'Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot' would get my vote.

[hblask 1]

The website you linked in the OP has Franken up by a small amount. When does this process end? How is the final decision made? In other words, is the number official once this recount is over?

I think the court challenges won't be over for months, but I think it will be declared over once two things are settled: what to do with improperly rejected absentee ballots, and the fate of the "double-counting duplicate-original" issue. There are still a bunch of withdrawn challenges to be counted, but I don't think that's controversial. This race is far from over, but Franken has won most of the key decisions, so he'll probably win.

[hblask 1]

Anyone that wrote a book called 'Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot' would get my vote.

As promising of a start as that title is, unfortunately it is both the breadth and depth of Franken's political knowledge.

[CaneBrain 95]

Franken will be declared the winner.Legal battles shall ensue. Precedent says Franken gets the seat after a bit. Should be interesting to watch anyway.

[timwakefield 68]

Yep.http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50405S20090105

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Democrat Al Franken will be declared the winner of the tight U.S. Senate contest in Minnesota, emerging from a ballot recount with a slim margin over Republican Norm Coleman, state officials said on Sunday.But Coleman, the incumbent, has asked Minnesota's supreme court to require that a few hundred additional absentee ballots be included in the recount -- and he could then ask the court to investigate the contest all over again."At the moment, Franken has a 225-vote lead," after the weekend counting of what were deemed the last uncounted absentee ballots, said Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat who oversaw the process.Ritchie said unless the supreme court acts on Coleman's request and orders more ballots to be counted, he will reconvene the state's Canvassing Board on Monday to certify Franken as the winner of the November 4 contest.

The article is much longer, that's just the beginning.

[hblask 1]

I can't decide if I think this process has been fair or not. Certainly there were lots of close calls that could have gone either way, and you can't disagree too strongly with any particular decision, but every single close call went Franken's way. In a highly Democratic state, that looks like some serious bias. If it even had gone 2:1 for Franken it'd be hard to argue, but it looks like it's 100% of close calls go to Franken. Missing ballots in a Franken district? Use the count that favors Franken. Missing ballots in a Coleman district? Use the count that favors Franken.On the other hand, watching them, they seemed pretty earnest and honest. But there can be no mistake: this was an election decided by the process, not by the voters. It was too close to decide what the voters wanted, well within the margin of error.

[JustDoIt 10]

I can't decide if I think this process has been fair or not. Certainly there were lots of close calls that could have gone either way, and you can't disagree too strongly with any particular decision, but every single close call went Franken's way. In a highly Democratic state, that looks like some serious bias. If it even had gone 2:1 for Franken it'd be hard to argue, but it looks like it's 100% of close calls go to Franken. Missing ballots in a Franken district? Use the count that favors Franken. Missing ballots in a Coleman district? Use the count that favors Franken.On the other hand, watching them, they seemed pretty earnest and honest. But there can be no mistake: this was an election decided by the process, not by the voters. It was too close to decide what the voters wanted, well within the margin of error.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.htmlFunny Business in MinnesotaIn which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken. Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.[Review & Outlook] APMr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.The Opinion Journal WidgetDownload Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

[brvheart 1,752]

This whole thing makes me sick.

[CaneBrain 95]

link to foxnews/wsj/rush limbaugh's house of oxycontin website

Hi. I'm the 2000 Presidential election. Stuff happens. Get over it.

[hblask 1]

Hi. I'm the 2000 Presidential election. Stuff happens. Get over it.

Hmmmm.First, previous election mischief doesn't justify new election mishcief.Second, every independent count in Fla in 2000 led to the same result, a Bush win. I don't know of a single method of counting that gave the state to Gore.Minnesota is a very different case, where a couple of decisions decide the election. As I said earlier, it's probably just too close to call and should go to a coin flip, because the number of contested ballots where there is no way to determine the correct answer is way higher than the margin of the election. But it is highly suspicious that EVERY decision went Franken's way.

[brvheart 1,752]

Hi. I'm the 2000 Presidential election. Stuff happens. Get over it.

You don't seriously still believe this do you? The 2000 election was not stolen. Every recount, even heavy liberal recounts like the New York Times, had Bush winning.

[JustDoIt 10]

Hi. I'm the 2000 Presidential election. Stuff happens. Get over it.

Come on you can do better than that, the Florida law was followed and Bush won......oops here comes the Florida Supreme Court and new law is made from the bench and away we go. Oh well, made good money for the networks.

[BigDMcGee 3,352]

I can't decide if I think this process has been fair or not. Certainly there were lots of close calls that could have gone either way, and you can't disagree too strongly with any particular decision, but every single close call went Franken's way. In a highly Democratic state, that looks like some serious bias.

Call it home field advantage. Should it happen? No. Will it happen again? Yes. I know some of you conservatives are bitter right now, but in the long run, this stuff will break even, and both Dem's and Reps will benefit from this kind of thing. In close, contested races, Conservative states will rule in favor of republican candidates, and liberal states will rule in favor of Dems. If you want a more standard way of voting, convert to digital.

[timwakefield 68]

You don't seriously still believe this do you? The 2000 election was not stolen. Every recount, even heavy liberal recounts like the New York Times, had Bush winning.

That is so blatantly false that I assume you just made it up, or else you purposely omitted a whole lot of 'ifs.' In fact, the NYT and other media outlets found that had the entire state been subject to a recount (which was never the case), Gore would have won. But who cares about a little thing like who actually got more votes?

[vbnautilus 48]

That is so blatantly false that I assume you just made it up, or else you purposely omitted a whole lot of 'ifs.' In fact, the NYT and other media outlets found that had the entire state been subject to a recount (which was never the case), Gore would have won. But who cares about a little thing like who actually got more votes?

I think you're both sort of right. The comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots solidifies George W. Bush's legal claim on the White House because it concludes that he would have won under the ground rules prescribed by the Democrats.But the analysis does not diminish the heartbreaking might-have-beens for Al Gore. It suggests that more Floridians intended to vote for Mr. Gore but were deterred, in some cases by ballots that were confounding even to elderly voters who are accustomed to having five bingo cards going at once. (No wonder networks reported on election night that, based on polls of voters leaving the polls, Mr. Gore had won Florida.)http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics...c9d&ei=5070