Norm Coleman
gregladen | December 12, 2008
"The actions today by the Canvassing Board can only be described as confusing to us."
Coleman's chief lawyer, Fritz Knaak, has filed papers to stop 133 votes in a Franken-leaning section of Minneapolis ... mainly college students ... from being counted. Why? Because he is too stupid to understand the not so complicated situation...
"While advocates for the Franken Campaign stood outside with signs reminiscent of Florida in 2000, what we now have before us is a situation in which there now exist essentially, more than 87 different standards for how ballots will be included in the so-…
gregladen | December 12, 2008Something very interesting just happened in Minnesota.
You know about the recount, and you know that today the canvassing board is deciding what to do about a number of possibly improperly rejected absentee ballots.
At least 630, and possibly as many as 1,500, absentee ballots have been improperly rejected in the Minnesota Senate race. If they are included in the recount to determine if Al Franken or Norm Coleman should be senator, there is a pretty good chance that these will favor Franken. I would estimate that the consideration of Absentee ballots could shift the numbers by between 80…
gregladen | December 12, 2008Next week, probably over a four day period, the ad hoc State Canvassing Board will go through all the recount data and look at the 3-4 thousand contested ballots and come up with a final number in this very close Minnesota senate race. But today they are expected to make a couple of decisions that may have an even larger effect on the outcome.
One of the most important decisions they will make today is what to do about the 133 ballots that are "missing" (read: a Coleman supporter hid somewhere, most likely) in one Minneapolis district. Without these votes in a Franken-supporting area,…
gregladen | December 11, 2008On the eve of a key State Canvassing Board meeting on the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Al Franken presented affidavits today from 62 Minnesotans who said their absentee ballots were improperly rejected.
With Franken behind in the official Senate recount, the affidavits were the latest attempt by the campaign to increase the pressure on the board to count absentee ballots that were improperly rejected. The affidavits followed the release of a web video Wednesday by the campaign that portrayed the stories of seven Minnesotans whose ballots were improperly rejected. A campaign spokesman said the…
gregladen | December 10, 2008Wait -- my headline is wrong. Coleman isn't stealing the election, and neither is Franken. Both sides are going to fight the recount battle all the way to the end, and that's the way it should be.
And the election isn't in chaos. Routine problems are being handled routinely, with one precinct still up in the air. It's just an unbelievably close election, and no one knows who will win.
What is happening, though, is that the national Republicans (Ann Coulter, Powerline, Wall Street Journal) are setting the stage for a "stolen election" claim. ...
This post is dead on. Here at GLB, we monitor…
gregladen | December 9, 2008He's not saying.
Is Norm Coleman under investigation in connection with the claims made in a lawsuit alleging that a longtime supporter, Nasser Kazeminy, used an insurance company that employs Coleman's wife to illegally pass money to Coleman?
Could be...
Last month, a Minnesota good-government group sent letters to the FBI and the Senate ethics committee, calling on both to investigate the charges. Coleman quickly responded by declaring in a statement:
I not only welcome such an investigation, but I am eager to have it move forward immediately.
That forthright response made us wonder…
gregladen | December 6, 2008I have a little more information and some exact numbers for you.
First, some of the numbers.
The number of votes per candidate not counting Minneapolis 3-1, which has a packet of missing votes currently being searched for:
Franken: 1,210,285
Coleman: 1,210,995
The number of votes per candidate including Minneapolis 31's results from the machine count:
Franken: 1,211,375
Coleman: 1,211,590
Regardless of anything you've heard or read, this second set of numbers is exactly how this recount started ... with Franken behind by 215 votes.
Then we have the number of votes per candidate after the…
gregladen | December 5, 2008All but one precinct has been counted (and I understand that will be done momentarily). However, there is a box (or bag or envelope) of ballots missing in Minneapolis. The Secretary of State has indicated that the recount deadline is extended to allow these missing 130 or so votes to be found and included. (Coleman's lawyer is objecting to this, naturally.) In a television interview earlier today, Richie also indicated that the state will be looking at a number of absentee ballots as well.
The current difference between Coleman and Franken is probably about 192 votes, with Coleman ahead…
gregladen | November 30, 2008An enjoyable overview of the Coleman Franken Recount process all it attends to ...
"What do we want?" Franken shouts.
"PATIENCE!" the volunteers respond.
"When do we want it?" Franken asks.
"NOW!" the crowd demands.
Here
Hat tip: Ana
gregladen | November 27, 2008The word on the street is that Colleman recount watchers have shifted strategy in order to increase an apparent lead over Al Franken. It seems that many of the Coleman people are challenging perfectly good Al Franken ballots in order to make the miniscule Coleman lead appear to grow, possibly allowing Coleman to have Yet another Victory Press Conference.
According to Joe Bodell:
...a view from inside the recount operation shows just how the Coleman operation is working: not just challenging questionable ballots, but challenging ballots that are clearly Franken votes for the sake of…
gregladen | November 26, 2008Another local blogger, Jeff Rosenberg, is following the recount and providing his own analysis.
Here.
gregladen | November 25, 2008With 80.6 percent of the vote recounted, the known difference between Coleman and Franken has for the first time grown greater than the audited and adjusted original count differenct of 215. The difference is now, by my rekoning, a whopping 238. This, by Norm Coleman's standards, is a virtual landslide!!!
But that number is fairly small in comparison to the 3594 votes that are currently contested by both camps, and the thousand or so potentially contested absentee ballots.
It is still the case that anything could happen.
gregladen | November 25, 2008The numbers are now settling in for the Coleman-Franken Senate race recount for Minnesota. With 74.2% of the votes counted, it is now possible to make a reasonably good prediction of the outcome of the current recount, not counting challenged ballots or other changes. The following graph shows the change across time for each day of the recount in the number of votes for each of these two candidates.
What you see here is a random scatter of points. The regression line has become meaningless. What this tells us is that the number of votes from the recount process will be about 45 less for…
gregladen | November 23, 2008FiveThirtyEight is a pretty good web site dealing with polls and other election realted number crunching. They predicted the outcome of the race for president almost as accurately as I did, so I figure they're pretty good. And now, FiveThirtyEight has a reasonably good analysis suggesting that Franken is going to win the recount.
Here's the argument in a nutshell. Franken is going to win because of all the reasons we've been saying all along (see this and this). But in some precincts, the Republicans are challenging a LOT of votes that are likely to be called as Franken votes, so they are…
gregladen | November 23, 2008Here's the graph:
The explanation for the graph is here.
This is a little misleading. The number of votes counted yesterday and contributing to this right-most point is very small ... hardly any counting was going on during the day Saturday. The Monday data, added to this, will be more useful. (In fact, some of you may have noticed, that while this graph is fun, there are major violations going on here statistically ... which is why there is no R-squared or p value being given!)
I've changed the Republican Party Line to be a third order polynomial for maximum absurdity.
See this post for…
gregladen | November 22, 2008This is hyst-fucking-erical.
OK, we've been recounting ballots pursuant to the implementation of actual Democracy in the Coleman-Franken race for U.S. Senate.
So what do you think the standard JOKE among the Democrats ... working as volunteers to observe the count for Franken ... has been? This:
"I challene this ballot because the voter filled in the bubble for Norm Coleman. Obviously, this voter is delusional."
Ha ha ha. Well, even if it is not the funniest joke you've ever heard, it IS a joke. Right?
Right?
Well, no, not if you are a Republican. The Coleman challengers have…
gregladen | November 8, 2008Norm Coleman is afraid of YOUR vote. Especially if you filed an absentee ballot:
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman filed an injunction to stop the opening and counting of 32 absentee ballots in Minneapolis, according to a copy of the court documents filed today provided to the Pioneer Press by Democrat Al Franken's campaign....
...The Franken campaign officials said Saturday that Coleman officials are trying to "deprive Minnesota voters of their civil rights."
Andy Barr, Franken's communications director, said in a statement: "Ever since the routine process of canvassing to ensure that every vote…
gregladen | November 7, 2008Both Norm Coleman (R, Incumbant) and Al Franken have set up legal oversight teams for the impending recount in the Minnesota Senatorial race. However, Coleman's lawyer is regisning from the team. Acorrding to the West Central Tribune Online, Coleman's campagin ...
... announced Wednesday evening that former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger, a Republican, would oversee the recount for Coleman. But Heffelfinger removed himself Thursday morning, saying he had to focus on guiding a city of St. Paul review of law enforcement practices during the Republican National Convention.
"I have realized…