Campaign Diaries

In mid-October, Norm Coleman announced that he would no longer resort to negative advertising after months of vicious attacks against his opponent. Of course, Coleman knew full well that the NRSC would continue to air its attack ads.

Yesterday, the Coleman campaign issued a statement calling on both sides to decrease the number of ballot challenges. The statement acknowledged that Republican watchers had issued some frivolous challenges and explained that both sides were being caught up in the need to meet the other camp’s challenges, uselessly raising the stakes since the vast majority of challenges is expected to be rejected when the state’s canvassing board meets in mid-December.

The statement expressed a noble sentiment, but it was not matched in practice. In yesterday’s recounting activity, the Coleman campaign issued far more challenges. As of Monday night, Republicans had challenged 36 more ballots than their counterparts; as of last night, that number had risen to 147.

Over the same period, Coleman increased his lead from 210 to 282 votes - 67 more than at the beginning of the recount.

147 might be a small number compared to the more than 5,000 ballots that have been set aside, but it is highly significant compared to Coleman’s 282 vote lead. It suggests that the increase in Coleman’s lead is somewhat artificial and due to Republicans increasing the pace of their own challenges. Of course, this is simply a hypothesis: We do not know what ballots are being challenged, why they are being challenged, how clear voter intent was. (The Star Tribune provides its reader an amazing collection of pictures of 599 challenged ballots.)

In short, we do not know whether the same proportion of challenges from the two camps will be sustained - and that is the key question. All that the growing disparity between the number of Coleman and Franken challenges means is that Coleman’s lead will decrease significantly even if the same share of challenges from the two camps gets sustained.

That said, there is no question that Democrats were hoping to pick up more ground before the canvassing board met. At this point, Franken’s best hope is to increase the universe of valid ballots, which is why Democrats have spent so much effort focusing on thousands of rejected absentee ballots. Franken’s campaign claims that a substantial number of these ballots were rejected improperly and because of administrative error and sought to convince the state’s canvassing board to instruct counties to sort through the absentee ballots again and include votes that might have been rejected improperly.

In a major blow to Franken’s hopes, the 5-member canvassing board (led by Democratic Secretary of State Ritchie) unanimously ruled yesterday that it did not have the authority to include rejected absentee ballots to the vote tally, a decision so important that even Harry Reid expressed his disappointment from Washington.

The book is certainly not closed, however: The canvassing board specified that it was not ruling on the merits of Franken’s arguments (in fact, they expressed some sympathy with Franken’s pleas to reconsider rejections) but only on whether they had the authority to do anything about it. They added that they will consult the state’s Attorney General on whether counties should go through their absentee ballots again - and certainly did not close the door for any county to do that if they so desire.

Furthermore, the canvassing board’s decision sets the stage for the election being dragged to court, as the Franken campaign could file suit to get counties to reconsider rejected ballots. And then there is the most chaotic option of all: A challenge in front of the U.S. Senate, which would put all other Senators in a very uncomfortable position.

And happy Thanksgiving!