I wrote over the weekend of how the numbers of challenged ballots, by both the Franken and Coleman campaigns in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate hand count, have been ballooning as the count proceeds. In some cases, there are good reasons to challenge ballots on the basis of whether the voter’s intent is clear or not.
And then, there’s the Coleman campaign’s attempts to challenge ballots simply because the voter had voted for John McCain, and thus, as they argue, a vote for Al Franken, or for no Senate candidate at all must have been a mistake, and the ballot should be counted instead for Norm Coleman.
No, seriously, this is what they are arguing. Here’s The Uptake’s video report:
(Note: TheUptake.org has been featuring regular daily LIVE VIDEO coverage of the counting at a number of locations, in addition to their edited video features posted at their RecordTheVote.com site. Thank you, Uptake! I’ve been on the road, and off the grid almost every day for the last few — and will be again for the next several — so if you guys see any vids over there that folks ought to know about, please leave the links in comments!)
The Republican mantra: “What’s mine is mine and what’s thine is mine.”
Amen, zap. Truly, you do not exaggerate.
A thief by any other name is still a Republican.
The uptake coverage of the RNC convention was excellent also
Well, clearly, those evil Dems somehow managed to brainwash upstanding Repbulican voters into somehow selecting Al Franken over Coleman. Must have been subliminally piped through their ipods. Or, even more nefarious, when the voters were voting, a highly technical compuuterized beam of light — a “”LA-zerr”” — shone on the ballots and flipped the names! Yeah, that’s it, vote-flipping by extraterrestrial light waves! Nailed. Election fraud, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
… Lora said…
Bull. You’ve totally failed to explain what the lizard people were doing on the ballot.
It’s bad enough we have these illegal aliens voting in our elections but now these undocumented immigrants from south of the Pleiades are running for American political offices!
I have news for both of you! The space lizards have been running things since 20 January 1981. I can’t believe it’s taken people this long to catch on.
“Franken Camp Calls for Investigation of Missing Ballots”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/24/franken-camp-calls-for-in_n_146140.html
“…In a conference call with reporters on Monday, aides to the Democratic challenger said that they were growing increasingly concerned with news reports that ballots from Election Day — which by state law must be recounted — have gone missing.
“The number of votes counted on November 4th,” said spokesman Andy Barr, “exceeds the number of ballots produced for consideration during the recount…”
**************
Note: the article doesn’t say by how much.
(Paging Karen from Illinois: more votes than voters, just like so many other races you tracked with precision during the Primaries. Seems the ghost-of-New-Hampshire-election-anomalies-past is still rearing its YooO-gly head(s). Oh, and btw, word from Nancy Tobi is that NH S.O.S. Gardner will not allow videotaping of the tabulation room by citizen observers. Chreeestos crispies. Hope they have enough in the state budget for all the additional Police Dogs.)
Please check your facts before blasting Coleman. On November 7, 2008 that AP ran a story titled Most Under-votes Cast in Counties Won by Obama, by Brian Bakst. The story points out that the under-votes in St. Louis, Ramsey and Hennepin counties account for 10, 540 under-votes, where Obama won by 63% or more. Only about 6,100 votes were in counties won by Republican John McCain.
IF, and that’s a big IF Coleman is going after the McCain / Coleman connection, it is only because AP and Franken have already established the Obama / Franken connection where the numbers are in Franken’s favor.
I beg to differ with the cavalier comment regarding the “What’s mine is mine, what’s thine is mine†being assigned to the conservatives. Let us present the full side of the story.
Respectfully Submitted
Paul
The Lee’s Summit Conservative
Paul, I think there really is a difference between speculating that missing votes would have been for Franken based on that and demanding that McCain votes count for Coleman based on that.
You beg to differ with something I did not say? That’s very polite of you… and very irrelevant.
“Republicans”, as represented by the leadership of the Republican Party, are not conservatives and haven’t been for many years.
I know. I was fairly conservative in many respects… or was before Republican malfeasance on a truly massive scale in the name of a conservatism they never practiced made even that appellation intolerable to me.
And by the evidence to date, for Republican politicos, “What’s mine is mine and what’s thine is mine.” isn’t a cavalier comment… it’s a fair description of their modus operandi.
As for the argument that “Franken did it first”… Agent 99 said it: Franken did not do what Coleman has done: demand that undervotes in the Senate race be counted for Coleman because the voter voted for McCaine at the top of the ballot. And nothing can explain Coleman demanding that votes for Franken actually be counted for Coleman because of a vote for McCaine at the top of the ballot… nothing except “What’s mine is mine and what’s thine is mine.”
Is the Franken camp’s concern about missing ballots based on the difference in the number of votes between the initial machine count vs. the ongoing handcount of ballots or is it based on a difference between the number of ballots actually cast according to precinct info. vs. the number of ballots per precinct available for the hand recount? If it is the former, the difference might be explained by the not unlikely possibility that the scanners erroneously counted more ballots than were cast (eg- counted some ballots twice?) Also, I wonder if the seemingly absurd challenges by the Coleman camp have a purpose beyond any likelihood that they will ultimately be counted for Coleman. If they can challenge enough ballots cast for Franken it would increase the likelihood that at the end of the recount (and before the challenged ballots are decided and assigned) Coleman will be ahead and his camp can then claim that if Franken wins after the challenged ballots are counted that the election was stolen by assigning “dubious” votes to Franken. That might also explain why the Franken camp is apparently challenging ballots on a tit-for-tat basis as related at this site.
P.S. to 99- do you know what happened to the preview screen?
Steve
There are some page loading time issues around here and I think Brad may have nixed it until he can do some upgrades. Plus, we’ve had a few posts hit the front page at Digg lately and in order to handle the onslaught we have to turn some features off for a while and he may simply have forgotten to turn it back on.
In short, I don’t know for sure, but I do know that there are some backstage remodels in the works.
That preview window was pretty nice… except I kept trying to make my edits in it and would get all vexed about that!
So I sure don’t miss that part…. 😛
Actually, given the inevitable Republican “stabbed in the back” meme during their upcoming years in the wilderness, some folks believe that the Coleman “challenge at any cost” tactic has the goal of tainting any Democratic victory by enabling propaganda such as wingnut blastmails to scream about “zillions of obvious votes for (Repub) stolen by tainted librul panels”… reality notwithstanding as always… and that the ballooning number of Franken counter-challenges is just so that such blasts can be countered with “We also had lots of challenges so why did the Repubs on the panel find more of our challenges valid than (Repub)’s?”
I’m not sure as to the validity of the insight or of the use of such a counter-tactic if it exists…
99- Thanks for the info
Zapkitty- I think you are agreeing pretty much with what I surmised in comment #12.
… Steve said…
Then you are wrong 😉
What I wrote was “I’m not sure as to the validity of the insight or of the use of such a counter-tactic if it exists.”
To know that it is inevitable that the R’s will leave screaming and wailing if they leave at all takes little insight.
That the Franken campaign might be bulking up the challenges in order to readily counter one such backlash is supposition as far as I know, and I don’t know how effective such a counter would be.
I don’t know guys, in close races where the big D towns are counted first and it is close, the R’s usually take it on the rural South and West areas (of Mpls/StP.)
…from what I have witnessed previously, and it still appears so that Hennepin, Ramsey and St Louis counties are the Dem strongholds, after that, look out.
Wellstone was the only one to previously overcome those stats for the most part.
Encouraging to see the McCain Franken ballots tho.
Again, we’ll see.
All that is needed is for just ONE voter to come forward and say, “Okay, I voted for McCain because I thought he was the best Presidential candidate, and for Franken because I thought he’d be the best Senator, and the argument’s OVER! If ONE did it, MANY could have!
jeanie…sos dif day..lol
it would be interestin to compare the signature list to how many ballots,unfortunately with the new electronic precinct books,there is no actual signature list,theres just a pile of cards (that rnt secure)…with every piece of hava that is put into practice,things just get worse and worse
sigh
lee quoated an article that said
Though some voters may have intentionally bypassed the race, others may have mismarked their ballot or optical scanning machines may have misread them. A recount to begin Nov. 19 will use manual inspection to detect such ballots.
get that lee,optical scanners may nave misread them
thats whole point here…..the scanners r just one more blackbox and u neo cons want us to “trust” it and u
i believe i spaek for most of the bradblog readers when i say…we want a system we can trust
So, since Obama won Minnesota, doesn’t that mean that Al Franken won because a vote for Obama would mean a vote for Franken?
… Jamie said…
Nah… what they’re really trying to prove is that all votes for Obama were actually votes for McCaine… 😉
Why can’t Coleman understand that a vote for McCain and Franken in the same ballot was a mistake; they meant to vote for Obama.
For the no senate vote at all along with a vote for McCain was also a mistake; they meant not to vote for McCain either.
Their arguement is entirely backwards.