Minneapolis discovery costs Franken 44 votes

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Twin Cities

What Maplewood giveth, Minneapolis taketh away.

Elections officials in Minnesota's largest city today discovered that one precinct came up 133 ballots short of election day totals, resulting in a net loss for Democratic challenger Al Franken of 44 votes.

The development wipes away what had been a boon for Franken in his bid to overtake Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, after Ramsey County officials found an additional 37 votes for Franken from a Maplewood precinct on Tuesday.

Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert said she believes the error occurred when election judges at the precinct on election night mistakenly ran ballots with write-in candidates through a counting machine twice. There were 129 such ballots.

Reichert said although the numbers do not match exactly, she is confident that that's what happened and will report those numbers to the Secretary of State's Office. She also detailed a search for any potential missing envelopes that contain ballots, including opening the counting machine, talking to election judges and calling the church where the polling place was located.

Read more: http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_11129187?nclick_check=1

[hlthe2b]

1. A whole lot of "movin and shakin" going on, it seems....

hmmmm....

[xchrom]

2. in minneapolis? -- colour me suspicious. nt

[Deja Q]

17. Same here. Oh, some Coleman voters are there, but unless old people moved in en masse,

it's not likely Coleman have won anything from that city.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Even my bright blue neighborhood has pockets of Coleman voters

:shrug:

[BootinUp]

3. that explanation doesn't make a lot of sense to me. nt

[hoboken123]

4. How bad?

This sounds like a bad hit to Franken's chances.

[amdezurik]

5. so many counts hard to know which is correct

[aggiesal]

8. I heard that as of last night Franken was leading by ...

approximately dozens of votes.
Somewhere between 25-30 votes.

[catgirl]

6. I can't imagine any precincts going for Coleman in Mpls

This is very weird.

[Muttocracy]

7. I bet they're still for Franken, just a smaller lead. nt

[Phred42]

9. Just have a RUN-OFF Election and be done with it

[dysfunctional press]

12. wouldn't it be better to let it play out according to the rules and laws that are in place?

i don't think that there's a provision for a run-off in this scenario under minnesota election law.

[qb]

10. I wonder if Normie is as skeptical of the Minneapolis votes he was of the Maplewood votes.

I think Franken will still prevail after they sort out all of the challenges.

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. How on earth do batches of ballots keep getting lost during your

election counts? I mean what level of competency is required NOT to LOSE batches of ballots? What do they have to do? Carry them from A to B? Then bring them back from B to A or near A, for the count? Don't tell. It's the machines.

[scytherius]

13. Regardless of the result, it needs to be as fair and above board as possible n/t

nt

[kcass1954]

14. If Franken loses fair and square, that's okay. There are just too many

"strange" things happening with ballots for me to think that this will be anything but "fair and square".

[LynneSin]

15. This is why we should have run-off elections

I'm not pointing fingers at dems or republicans on this one. There is too much subjectiveness in this recount and "Oops I found these under a stack of magazines in the Men's room" blah blah blah going on here.

I now know that Louisiana and Georgia have automatic run-offs when no one receives over 50% of the votes. You eliminate all but the top 2 candidates and have a revote that will probably make a clearer picture of who really won.

[surrealAmerican]

24. Would this help if you can't be sure the votes ...

... are counted accurately? You might just wind up with the same problem in a run-off.

[kath]

28. How the heck does a run-off help? - if ballots aren't counted properly the first time, there's no

reason to believe the count will be any more accurate with a run-off.
They're doing it right - hand-counting every ballot and ascertaining voter intent, also trying to make sure the precinct records match the ballot totals.

I'm WAY sick of people suggesting that a run-off would help in this situation - it's not a logically supportable argument at all.

The accuracy and transparency of our election system SUCKS.

[Deja Q]

16. "I just *found* these" incidents has brought up a lot of suspicions.

Didn't Franken's people find a bunch a few days ago?

Everybody's finding ballots.

Anyone recall "Good Times"? JJ Evans kept "finding" things too.

Where's Florida to keep an eye on these recounting doofuses (doofii?) who keep "finding" ballots for their favored politician?

LynneSin, Phred42, and the others are right; a run-off election seems what's needed. This "finding" of ballots will otherwise go on forever; every recount contested and every contested results contested and every contested results of every contested result contested.

[LisaL]

22. They didn't find the ballots.

In fact it seems the ballots are lost. They had less votes after the recount than they had during the original count.

[ksimons]

18. I found a bag of ballots in my trunk. Should I tell anyone?

Uh, naw. What does it matter. I need wrapping paper anyway. It's so purty with all the little dots and what-not.

[still_one]

19. Third party candidate or not, it is disgusting that Minnesota didn't appreciate the stakes

coleman voted 90% with bush

If those in Minnesota who voted for Obama, and then decided to vote for Coleman or the third party candidate over Franken, WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?

[scarletwoman]

20. "WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?" 22 came from my little rural precinct.

We had 107 votes for Obama, but only 85 for Franken. Coleman got 3 of those Obama votes, Barkley got 18, and a write-in candidate got 1.

I checked the Nov. 4 totals for dozens of rural precincts around the state, and the pattern was very similar. Franken's vote totals were approximately 10 to 20 percent less than the Obama vote totals.

If it's any consolation, most of the difference went to Barkley and not to Coleman. The Franken/Coleman campaign battle got so nasty and ugly, I think a lot of people just felt like, "A pox on both of you!".

sw

[still_one]

23. Appreciate the insight, but I can only shake my head because the differences between

coleman and Franken are so obvious on the issues, and anyone in their right mind should have realized that Barkley didn't have a chance, except as a spoiler

[scarletwoman]

25. Just anecdotally, a lot of Barkely voters have said that they did it as a protest.

The ad campaigns from both Coleman and Franken got SO nasty, that some people just felt fed up with both of them. It wasn't that anyone seriously thought that Barkley would win, they just wanted to send a message of, "A pox on BOTH of you!".

Coleman's ads were definitely nastier, but some of Franken's ads so obviously stretched the facts that he didn't come off looking very good, either.

sw

[Selatius]

26. Negative advertising was also a contributing factor to why McCain lost so badly.

Many people were turned off by the negative ads coming from the McCain camp.

[Bjorn Against]

21. That article does not tell the whole story, those ballots were not fed through the machine twice.

According to the Pioneer Press, Reichert originally said that the discrepancy was the result of 129 ballots with write-in candidates being run through a counting machine twice.

However, this explanation is completely impossible according to the numbers provided to the Franken campaign by Reichert herself:

1,047 voters signed in on the roster.
932 additional voters registered in person on Election Day.
35 absentee ballots were accepted in this precinct by the city.
15 absentee ballots were accepted in this precinct by the county.
TOTAL: 2,029 voters cast legal ballots (2,028 votes are recorded on the machine tape).
TODAY: 1,896 ballots were included in the recount.

That’s a difference of 133 that cannot be explained by ballots being run through twice on Election Day, because there were 133 more voters (not just votes) on Election Day than there were ballots available for the recount.

http://blog.alfranken.com/2008/12/03/franken-campaign-demands-that-recount-be-kept-open-in-minneapolis-precinct-after-133-ballots-are-reported-lost/

Somebody has a lot of explaining to do, and if those ballots don't show up expect a major court battle over this.