The Minnesota Senate race had almost been forgotten in the Illinois chaos, but the recount finally made some news today. The state canvassing board convened this morning to take up a few of the recount’s disputed issues. (The board will start considering challenged ballots next week.)
Needless to say, the smallest decision can be highly consequential in a race in which less than 200 votes separate the two candidates - and Franken today scored two major victories.
Yet, one of these victories comes with major caveats and both of the board’s decisions are sure to spark lawsuits by the two camps.
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Absentee ballots: The Franken campaign has been arguing for weeks that hundreds of absentee ballots were improperly rejected and has been upping its PR campaign with over-the-top videos of teary voters pleading with the state to count their vote.
For a long time, it looked like Democrats were making no progress in their effort to get counties to reconsider their rejected ballots. But that was before the Secretary of State’s office instructed counties to sort their rejected absentee ballots in five piles - the fifth representing those ballots that were not rejected for any of the four legal reasons to do so.
Not all counties complied with the request, but those that did found higher than expected numbers of improperly rejected ballots. The Deputy Secretary of State estimated today that there could be as many as 1,587 statewide. (The Pioneer Press thinks there are close to 2,000 such ballots.)
Today, the canvassing board considered how it should proceed with those ballots and decided to instruct counties to count the absentee ballots they deemed to have been improperly rejected andinclude them in amended tally of votes. This is a major victory for the Franken campaign as it dramatically expands the universe of valid ballots at a time the Democrat needs to find new votes to close the gap with Coleman.
However - and this is a huge and chaos-inducing caveat - the canvassing board determined that it could request counties do this, but it could not require it. Board members emphasized that all they were doing was issue a “recommendation.”
This is bound to feed controversy as both campaigns will seek to pressure counties. In particular, the Franken camp is sure to sue counties that refuse to include the improperly rejected ballots, opening a number of legal fronts before we even start thinking about the challenged ballots!
And there is a second major caveat: The board refused to specify its plans for whatever updated counts counties submit, leaving the door open that it could deem the process flawed at a later date. This means that Franken’s victory here is a temporary one, and that many counties might be dissuaded from spending the time and money to count the “fifth pile” since they cannot be sure their tally will end up being used anyway.
All of this increases the voluntary nature of the board’s “recommendation,” making it clear that the board is essentially passing the buck to the counties - and to courts.
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The 133 missing ballots: Earlier this month, the recount of Minneapolis Ward 3 Precinct 1 found 133 less ballots than the original count. Election officials first contended that the November 4th tally was flawed, but they soon admitted that these 133 votes were actual ballots that had gone missing and identified an envelope (”1 of 5″) that had disappeared. Excluding those ballots would have resulted in a net loss of 46 votes for Franken.
Election experts identified a solution to this mess: The precinct could use its original tally instead of its recounted one if it has good reason to do so, and this was a major question facing the canvassing board today.
In detailing her findings to the board, Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reiche reiterated that she had no doubt that those 133 ballots had been cast on November 4th. “We determined definitively the ballots were missing,” she said, and recommended that the board use the original tally - the one that included the 133 ballots.
The canvassing board decided (in a unanimous vote) to allow this substitution - a major development that saves Franken 46 votes and that is sure to spark a lawsuit by the Coleman camp. Canvassing board member and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson said there was “no doubt” this ruling would be challenged in court.
I can’t believe that we are in 2008 and we still do not have a uniformed method of voting that is transparent to all parties. It’s almost like everyone involved wants to keep a flawed methodology on hand so they can blame the system.
I think this race is a coin flip.
Just get it over with already. Sounds like the 1500+ votes are probably going to swing Franken’s way. He is a total nutjob, but if the people of Minnesota elected him fairly then let him have it. If ACORN was a large influence in the election then I have issues with giving all these disputed votes that would bring Franken the win. It is not right to claim you want fairness and equality, while at the same time you are supporting voter fraud in your favor.
“It is not right to claim you want fairness and equality, while at the same time you are supporting voter fraud in your favor.”
That’s not what I was meaning, and I’m sorry if you interpreted it that way. I’d like for all races in the US to be transparent. I fully support Al Franken, and I hope he wins over Norm Coleman. I just don’t want him elected and have a cloud over his election, which may, for some reason, influence the voters 6 years later to vote for the other candidate.
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