St. Louis County is being very unpredictable. They've had issues with older counting machinery, so unlike other counties they are reporting alot of additional votes for both candidates. The county also has an inordinately high challenge rate: 50 challenges by Coleman and 22 by Franken. That's 1/3 of Coleman's total challenges in a county that provided 4% of the total votes.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at November 20, 2008 10:54 AMThe suspense is killing me, CAPJ, thanks again for keeping watch for us!
Posted by iamcoyote at November 20, 2008 11:02 AMMinneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth are all pretty much disasters for Norm Coleman.
In Minneapolis (Hennepin Co.), Coleman has lost 14 more votes than Franken even though in the original count Franken had 58% of the two party vote and thus more votes to lose. Coleman's challenge rate is very high: 68 challenges to 31 for Franken. It's pretty hard to tell how many of those challenges are against Franken ballots and how many are against "other" ballots they believe should be for Coleman.
In St. Paul, Coleman has lost two votes while Coleman gained 11. In an interesting twist here, the person running the election in Ramsey County brought lawyers for each candidate into a room with the challenged ballots. They went through them evaluating whether the challenges and in the end decided that only one ballot would be left to the State Canvassing Board to evaluate. This leads me to believe that not many of the challenges are going to go in favor of the challenger.
In Duluth (St. Louis County), 14 of the 18 precincts using antiquated counting machines have been recounted, and among those Franken has a net gain of 34 votes.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at November 20, 2008 12:15 PMToday we have seen a pattern emerging: the Coleman campaign is being very aggressive about challenging ballots, which keeps them out of Franken's running total. The ballots will have to be tabulated by the State Canvassing Board in December but Coleman would use a lead going into that final tally as reason to delegitimize a Franken win. Starting tomorrow, I will calculate approximately what I expect Franken to gain from the State Canvassing Board since it looks like that will be decisive.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at November 20, 2008 04:20 PMThe Bag has photos of some of the thrown out ballots. I had no idea the Lizard People were running!
So, CAPJ, what percentage of the challenged ballots do you think will be good votes after they've been looked at more closely? I'm tempted to think Franken's team would be more honest in their challenges, and Coleman more brazen, so a net loss for Coleman, but maybe there's a set of criteria everyone uses to do it?
Posted by iamcoyote at November 20, 2008 04:54 PMThe campaigns can basically challenge what they want so long as it isn't "frivolous". From what I've heard and seen about the challenges, I expect 80% or so to be rejected. There are two types of challenges, though: "Type A" is where you challenge a vote for your opponent and "Type B" is where you challenge a no vote or other vote which you think should be for your candidate. Type A removes votes from the total we are seeing and Type B does not. Once today's totals are complete, I'll use my spreadsheet to estimate the amounts of Type A and B for each candidate. As of last night about 80% of challenges appeared to be Type A. Once I do the calculations tonight I'll get a better feel for how many votes Franken will gain from the State Canvassing Board.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at November 20, 2008 05:03 PMThanks, I didn't know it was broken down like that and the data was just out there. Pretty neat.
Posted by iamcoyote at November 20, 2008 06:10 PMThe 8:00 data dump from the Secretary of State had some good news for Franken. Fillmore County was farcical, however, with 27 Coleman challenges to 3 Franken challenges giving Franken -14 for the county. Any bets on how many of those Coleman challenges will be upheld?
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at November 20, 2008 07:28 PMColeman had been running 50% ahead of Franken in challenges, but Franken caught up. That is no doubt part of how he's doing better in the projections. My estimate of the full count of challenges is 84% Type A - contesting a ballot otherwise counted for the opponent. As it stands right now, I'd actually project Coleman to gain 14 votes from the State Canvassing Board.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at November 20, 2008 07:54 PMWow, I didn't expect that. Any more votes for the Lizard People? I suppose those kind of write ins happen all the time, huh?
Posted by iamcoyote at November 21, 2008 05:39 AMI love that this recount is so transparent and that we are getting so much info on it.
This was fun. The Bag, that Coyote linked to, had the link to MPR which allows us to vote on the challanged ballots.
I was almost with the majority on every vote.
A lot of the challanges are just stupid because the voter's intent is easily distinguishable...but I also understand that the laws must be followed (that is if people invalidate their ballots) even if the intent is clear.
Many first time voters would not know some of these laws, I presume, but how hard is it to follow the instructions?
I don't know about these polling places, but we have the same type of ballots and the instructions are everywhere and it is also explained by the volunteers when they hand us the ballots. I would think in elections that are as important as this last one that people would take extra care to make certain that the ballots were filled out exactly right just to make sure that the votes are counted.
We just need to continue to educate people. Hopefully this recount and the challanges that are being made will help to get the word out to people about how important that every single vote is and how important that it is to fill out the ballots correctly.
In addition, I think that it makes clear just how important that PAPER BALLOTS are - so that we can audit and recount and go back and make sure that our elections are safe.
Posted by Anjha at November 21, 2008 07:56 AMAs someone from Minnesota, I have been watching this very closely. I have tended to dismiss much of what I hear unless it makes sense in the broader sense.
There have been some campaign officials on both sides contacting various blogs and media. There has also been some old-time observers who are now finding it time to step into the limelight. There are a couple of things that are being said consistenty.
99%+ of the challenges will likely be rejected. One official claims that he has only seen 2 successful challenges since doing recounts. In every instance the election counters had come to an agreement on a vote and one of the representatives from the candidate "challenges" it. Keep in mind that these were likely votes counted by the machine, and you rarely see votes counted by the machine thrown out.
Also... contrary to some popular belief both sides are challenging the same sorts of ballots and nearly all of them are Coleman challenging a Franken ballot or Franken challenging a Coleman ballot. There are rare occasions where one side or the other is challenging an "other" and suggesting it should be a vote for them, but the number is not supposedly significant.
A Coleman representative explained that they are sort of playing defense. (which makes sense since they are ahead) They will challenge the same types of ballots being challenged by the Franken team. Franken's team was much more agressive yesterday (challenging almost 40 more ballots than Coleman's) after challenging about 20 less on Monday. Overall the Franken team has challenged between 10-20 more ballots through the first 800 challenges.
What this means is that nearly all of the challenged ballots (over 800 at this time) will be included in the final count. This make sense considering that both candidates have actually "lost" votes in the official counts.
Even when you add back in 95% of the rejected ballots you only have this:
Franken +233
Coleman +174
Not alot of additional ballots found for 46%... which makes it all the more likely that these challenged ballots will eventually be counted.
Secondly... Franken has gained 30 votes in the St Louis Precincts that used the older scanner. 17 of those 18 precints have been counted. Both sides claim or admit that this has been sort of a disappointing number for Franken who was hoping for a higher percentage of undervotes. Franken has also gained 40 votes in the City of St Paul (which was 53% counted). This worries the Coleman camp because most of Minneapolis is still uncounted and they hope the same doesn't happen.
On the flip side, if you remove those 70 extra votes from two ares from Franken... you have the rest of the state nearly even. Even the small number of Mpls count has not gone as well as the Franken team would have hoped for. There is some concern that when St Paul finishes (probably Monday) that they will be down to counting on Mpls to possibly pick up 100 votes or more... A number that clearly worries both sides.
Lastly... the absentee ballots will become an issue regardless of who loses. The Franken camp was apparently disappointed in the number of absentee ballots from Ramsey county that were suburban vs Urban... meaning that even in a strong county such as Ramsey, that Absentee ballots may not help Franken that much. They may go as high as 60-40 GOP to DFL in Minnesota.
Of course if Franken loses, he has nothing to lose by persuing the rejected absentee ballots. Hoping that it boils down to a case by case basis where the team with the most resources eventually finds the most erroneously rejected ballots.
That being said... If Coleman were to lose by a small number, he may have more to gain by opening the rejected absentee ballot can of worms simply because of a built in advantage.
Posted by CH Truth at November 21, 2008 09:37 AM