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2010-03-04T22:24:49.986-05:00

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2009-02-08T03:13:00.000-05:00

Your process sounds really sensible to me. Any si...

2009-02-05T14:35:00.000-05:00

Your process sounds really sensible to me. Any sign that this court is going to see the light and do that? For two days we have been treated to a one, by one, by one, review of ballots. Only 4,300 left to go. But it seems worse than that because the lawyer and the election official discuss the ballot but then the court does not seem to rule. So the lawyer says this one should count,or this one should not count and then what happens to that ballot? Nothing. They just move on to the next ballot. This is NUTS! Will the court really sit through this tedium for 6 more weeks? And then what? Review them all with Franken? Rule?

tmess2 is right on as to how this works.I said LON...

2009-02-05T02:40:00.000-05:00

tmess2 is right on as to how this works.

I said LONG ago, it's CLEAR that various election judges in various counties rejected ABE's in a manner that was not consistent. People keep spouting the "four valid reasons for rejecting an ABE." BS, there are far more permutations of that, based on MN law.

If we give a mulligan to the ABE's wrongly accepted (nothing you can do about that) and to the ABEs accepted by the campaigns at this point, fine, you still need the 3 judge panel and/or special magistrates or whoever to define PRECISE criteria for rejecting/accepting ABEs, and then apply such to the 12k outstanding rejected ABEs.

That is the LOGICAL thing to do.

And Franken will still very likely come out ahead, but it's time to bite the (yes very tedious) bullet and get down to it.

There is a better way but it would require the cou...

2009-02-04T23:42:00.000-05:00

There is a better way but it would require the court to take the lead (which it should have done during the pre-trial conference).

When I have tried civil cases (and most civil cases aren't tried, but are settled), I have worked out with my opponent prior to trial what evidence both of us agree is admissible and any way to expedite the trial.

In this case, that would have entailed the judges having the two parties get copies of the ballot envelopes, the voter rolls, the registration rolls, and the ballot applications from the counties. The court could then have special masters make preliminary rulings on the ballots. The parties would then be given a chance to identify which ballots they believed required further evidence (e.g. witness to say that it was their signature or that non-compliance fault of election official) and which ones they accepted the masters' initial ruling on.

A Democratic Minnesota legislator has introduced a...

2009-02-04T17:33:00.000-05:00

A Democratic Minnesota legislator has introduced a bill that would certify the winner of the recount. Then if the court cases overturn the result, the certification would be withdrawn. The bill would be retroactive and apply the day after it was passed, so Franken would be seated. Democrats control the legislature so it will pass.
BUT the Republican governor may/probably would not sign it.
In meantime, the court is going over, one at a time, rejected absentee ballots. At the present pace, this would take weeks...
There has to be a better way.

Mike in Maryland wrote: Can someone comment on whe...

2009-02-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

Mike in Maryland wrote: Can someone comment on whether the Court can, after this round or any round before a final decision after all appeals, order the Governor to sign off on the election and let the decision be made by the Senate as to whether to seat Franken or leave the seat open until the final, final, final court decision, whether in state or federal court?

Tomorrow, the Minnesota Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments regarding precisely that.

Can someone comment on whether the Court can, afte...

2009-02-04T16:49:41.750-05:00

Can someone comment on whether the Court can, after this round or any round before a final decision after all appeals, order the Governor to sign off on the election and let the decision be made by the Senate as to whether to seat Franken or leave the seat open until the final, final, final court decision, whether in state or federal court?

Norm isn't trying to drag it out FOREVER... Five a...

2009-02-04T16:07:00.000-05:00

Norm isn't trying to drag it out FOREVER... Five and a half years would be plenty for his purposes.

Nate wrote: ...only 1 was determined by county off...

2009-02-04T15:28:00.000-05:00

Nate wrote: ...only 1 was determined by county officials to be a valid ballot. At that rate of success, Coleman's 4,800 ballots would turn into a grand total of ... 32 that are actually deemed to have been rejected improperly.

During the election contest trial phase, the county officials don't deem which ballots were rejected improperly. That's up to the the three-judge panel to determine.

County officials have testified that they have rejected ballots because of mistakes made by the county election officials instead of mistakes made by the voters. The judges have indicated that these ballots might well be counted.

County officials also have testified that they have applied standards differently than other counties. For example, some counties rejected absentee ballots with invalid driver license numbers, which is not one of the four reasons statutues allow for rejecting absentee ballots. The three judges also might allow these rejected ballots to be counted.

In other words, your assumption that only 1 out of every 150 absentee ballots will be counted is a poor assumption.

Donelson,Yes, and that date will be with the perso...

2009-02-04T12:35:00.000-05:00

Donelson,

Yes, and that date will be with the person you least desire to be with.

You know what the difference between a young bull and an old bull is? The young bull gets all excited, and declares "Oh man, look at all those hotties! I wanna run down there and fuck one!"

The old bull replies, "Son, let's just walk down and fuck em all"

The desperate get maybe one date from the equally desperate. The nonchalant get many dates.

Which is why Franken was wise not to overplay his hand during this trial. Coleman was at every court appearance, and his press interviews only show a rapidly aging and increasingly desperate man with a confused strategy and not much to run on. Franken has on the other hand taken a hands-off approach-Marc Elias is the lawyer, not Franken, so he's letting Marc Elias do his job and not getting in the way of things. Coleman's digging himself a trench by increasing the number of votes to be recounted, and Franken's offering him a new shovel by adding his own to the pile. They both know that if all the absentee ballots are recounted Franken will wind up with a lead larger than Coleman can dispute. And Coleman wants to get just a subset of the total number counted, being the ones he thinks most likely voted for him. In his zeal, he may have opened the dorr to Franken's assertion that every vote should be counted.

Coleman wants to race down that hill and fuck a cow. Franken is taking the time to walk down to the pasture.

Fuck em all.

All I can say, where else can you get up to the mi...

2009-02-04T12:13:58.648-05:00

All I can say, where else can you get up to the minute news on this re-count in a concise way that everybody understands....AND....sound dating advice at the same time?
Once again, Nate, you're in a class all by yourself...!

"If you ask a girl out, and she turns you down the...

2009-02-04T12:04:00.000-05:00

"If you ask a girl out, and she turns you down the first three times, you don't really improve your odds of success by asking her out another 30 times."

Ah, youth! I, too, once treated romance as an exercise in logic...

As long as you spread out those 30 additional requests over a year or so, you may just find yourself with a date.

@ statler. Rochester went to Walz (D) and Obama (...

2009-02-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

@ statler.

Rochester went to Walz (D) and Obama (D).

Our state senator is a democrat, as are three of our four state reps.

Wash your mouth out with soap, please, and thank you.

Jason the democrat.

If I understand things correctly, Steve, the previ...

2009-02-04T11:19:00.000-05:00

If I understand things correctly, Steve, the previously rejected ballots in question have been ruled in for inspection and subsequent individual up-or-down rulings.

Whichever among them pass inspection will be counted in, as you suggest that they should be, a flash (comparatively speaking, anyway --as we witnessed during the recount stage of this, when it took the canvassing board less than an hour to tally up some 450 votes).

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/franken-jumps-out-to-223-vote-lead-on.html

It's the inspection of the ballots that is time-consuming and tedious (or hilarious, if one is watching the action unfold live @ The UpTake).

What no one has yet answered for me (at least that...

2009-02-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

What no one has yet answered for me (at least that I've been able to find) is what are these 4,800 ballots comprised of? It sounded to me like these are ones that Coleman had presented evidence on to the Franken campaign by 1/22...that seems a bit arbitrary, and perhaps even of an outsized benefit to Coleman. Though I trust Nate's analysis and don't think many of these will pass muster, I have to wonder this. I can't remember the exact number, but I thought there were about 12k-13k absentee ballots rejected in total.

Let's split the difference, and say it was about 12,500. Now almost 1,000 of these have been counted, leaving 11,500 uncounted absentee ballots, which is about what they said they wanted counted. What is 42% of 11,500...it's about 4,800. Could Coleman have cherrypicked to find the 4,800 ballots most likely to benefit him based on all the voter information he has access to and such? Or even a slightly less sophisticated method, perhaps 4,800 is the number of rejected absentee ballots in the counties which favored Coleman over Franken by decent margins.

Let's say on average 75% of the non-Barkley ballots favor Coleman and the other 25% favor Franken, and 16% overall don't go to either candidate. Well then, Coleman would have to get 538 (it's a conspiracy I tells ya) ballots opened to get 339 votes to Franken's 113, putting Coleman up by 1 vote. That means if he is successful in 11% of his challenges, he can win. Oh wait, wouldn't that be a higher percentage than what was originally deemed as improperly rejected the SECOND time they were reviewed.

I guess there's nothing to worry about!

Even with 4000 to count why should such a count ta...

2009-02-04T10:36:00.000-05:00

Even with 4000 to count why should such a count take longer than a day?

My neighbor in northern Minnesota had his absentee...

2009-02-04T10:34:00.000-05:00

My neighbor in northern Minnesota had his absentee ballot rejected because the Coleman campaign said his signature did not look valid.

This is interesting, considering that, in order not to make any mistakes, he drove 45 miles to fill out his absentee ballot right in front of the Deputee Registrar in Virginia, MN. He signed it in the Deputy Registrar's presence. Coleman's people know that most northern Minnesotans vote DFL and that his vote was likely to be for Franken, so a squiggly signature was the excuse for rejection.

If Coleman still harbors any hope at all of holdin...

2009-02-04T09:59:00.000-05:00

If Coleman still harbors any hope at all of holding elected office, it'll either be at the county-level in some right-wing enclave like Rochester, or it'll, be in another state. His bridges are in full blaze right now as far as any Minnesota independents or moderates are concerned. I have a feeling that if the election were re-done today, Coleman would come in a distant third.

Franken is able to come out of this with his credibility less damaged, because he had legitimate reason to hold on-those 225 votes he now leads by, specifically. It is hard to imagine that absentee voters-mostly students and travelers-would go for Coleman. Sure, the College Republicans exist even up north, but face it, most young people are by their very nature liberal in their tendencies even when they don't declare that sentiment openly.

And I think most of Minnesota sees this too. There just aren't going to be alot of corporate tycoons that voted absentee. Coleman is running to a dry well, and we all know it. He has to as well.

This isn't going to raise his public profile any. It's one thing to contest the outcome if there's a chance you actually won. It's another thing when you're just dragging things out to keep your opponent from claiming his seat out of pure spite.

What's he gonna use for a campaign slogan Vote Coleman-In Search of a Dead Horse to Flog for America?

speaking of which, I've already beaten this to death.

IF coleman is going to draw this out for months an...

2009-02-04T08:31:00.000-05:00

IF coleman is going to draw this out for months and months, than that's all the more reason to seat Franken right now.

There is precedent. In FL-13, don't forget, in 2006, Vern Buchanan (R) was seated in the House of Representatives on a 369 vote difference even though there were 18,000 unexplained undervotes, eaten by ES&S touch screen voting machines. The trial went on, while he was sitting in congress.

We should be thankful, at least, that MN uses these traceable, verifiable paper ballots. The entire country should.

I doubt Coleman has any plans to run for office i...

2009-02-04T08:22:00.000-05:00

I doubt Coleman has any plans to run for office in Mn. My brother lives there and he said even his voters are fed up with this never ending recount and all they want is a senator even if it`s franken.
Coleman couldn`t get elected dogcather in the future so he has nothing to lose with this never ending process.
It appears if he wants to drag this on indefinitely he can appeal all the way to the supreme court and probably they wouldn`t touch it and say it`s a state matter but it seems like this thing could be tied up for months.
If Pawlenty has any idea of running again his encouraging this challenge has doomed him, I expect he will just head for Iowa as soon as his term is over.

If you ask a girl out, and she turns you down the ...

2009-02-04T06:04:00.000-05:00

If you ask a girl out, and she turns you down the first three times, you don't really improve your odds of success by asking her out another 30 times. (You may, however, increase your odds of getting a slap in the face or a restraining order).

Valuable dating advice from Nate (learnt the hard way, I don't doubt) that many of the geekoids who hang around here would do well to heed --beginning, of course, with yours truLOLy.

Henry, Thanks for your comment. Guess we'll just h...

2009-02-04T05:29:00.000-05:00

Henry,
Thanks for your comment. Guess we'll just have to wait until the court posts its decision before we over-analyze it.

As far as your sentiment:

However, I bet Coleman still harbors a desire to hold public office again someday, and, therefore he will lose interest in dragging this out once the process becomes so clearly futile that the public's perception of him nears the point that would forever bar him from successfully seeking public office again.

imho (and in opinion of most MN voters, acc. to the now somewhat dated polls), Coleman is well past this point already. He lost any future electability and credibility when he opted to go the court contest route, contradicting his earlier stance(s) and exposing his hypocritical self.

The pro-dubya 25% lunatic fringe is still behind him, but that's about it.

~ Latte

Here's an idea...Filibuster Math: Dems Should Not ...

2009-02-04T05:25:00.000-05:00

Here's an idea...

Filibuster Math: Dems Should Not Seat Gregg's Replacement (Until Franken is Seated First)

With only 98 Senators seated, the number needed to hold off GOP obstructionism drops to 59...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6880

Trust liberal bloggers to think outside the box and attempt to salvage a victory from the Gregg appointment. And the best part: Gregg or Lynch don't get to have any say in the matter.

But of course, the Democratic leadership wouldn't dream of playing hardball politcs...it's not their style.

Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Absentee Ballots Unlikely to Save Coleman