Posted by Greg Laden on November 5, 2008 Earlier today, three voters of Somali origin at the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis told me — and two told an election observer — that a translator working there was instructing people to vote for Sen. Norm Coleman.
Wow. Given that Coleman may win this race by around 500 to 700 votes, this is significant. Did Coleman steal this election? Are we going to let him get away with this?
The story is here, and this is a related video:
The Franken team will not let us down – every impropriety will be considered and challenged. Every vote will be counted. Coleman’s “acceptance” speech (nothing to see here!) served only to make him appear more shady, ugly, and ugly.
Fingers crossed, for another month!!!
Ugly twice!
The gap is closing already, with data entry discrepancies (human error in the transcribing of votes from machine to machine) found in preliminary recounts. As a friend on facebook pointed out to me, there are now fewer votes separating the two candidates than there are precinct polling locations in Minnesota.
The current gap is 477 and has not changed over night. We’ll see what happens today.
Coleman is, of course, offering a solution.
The difference is now down to 341!!!
Other interesting numbers in this race (from MPR):
- More than 25,000 voters in the presidential contest weren’t recorded as voting for Senate.
- The actual votes showed that Franken failed to convert 362,000 Obama voters into his own.
Anyone else think those numbers seem large?
per CNN 3 minutes ago it was 342 votes
I don’t think those numbers seem too large–Frankens conversion is because he didn’t have the same appeal as Obama, or the History behind him. He also looked like just another mudslinging turd from New York ( I ALMOST voted for Barkley because of it).
Not to mention shaking his hand was like squeezing a loafy but warm chicken breast…
The 25,00 figure will probably come down a bit as the recount progresses, but the truth is, the Obama voters were there for Obama, and little else.
Ana: I spoke to a few dozen dem-leaning voters in our systematic calling, and I am not surprised at these numbers. (This depends a lot on the district, and I was working in a traditionally Republican district). Most voters I spoke with were not going to vote for Franken, and many of them were going to vote for Coleman and Obama.
Almost as much as I want Franken to win, I want Coleman to eat his words of the last couple of days.
It makes sense to me that many Obama voters would not vote for Franken, after all, they are different political animals. But 25,000 voters who came to the polls to express support for Obama who had no opinion on the Senate race, even with Barkley as an option? Smells like an undercount, to me, but I’m tainted with hope…
Oh the waiting!
btw – Franken campaign is asking for recount contributions
It’s not ONLY the smell, however, there’s also this:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/16777/problem-plagued-ballot-scanners-could-impact-coleman-franken-recount
And then, on the heading to court (yay judges!) front:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/16775/secretary-of-states-office-says-laws-may-have-been-broken-in-somali-translator-voting-incident
Yea, I just saw this about the bad machines. Undercounts. Lots and lots of undercounts.
So in one precinct, I just this second heard, the Franken votes were reported as 29 votes, but ooops, they meant 129. Ooops. That explains one of the big shifts that happened during the day today. (this is off of Channel 4 News)
Yes, donations to Franken’s recount might be nice.
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