Coleman ballot universe continues shrinkage

Yesterday was not a good day for Norm Coleman's chance of returning to the US Senate. Not good may be kind. As you all know the only way that Norm Coleman can hope to win in the Election Court Contest is by somehow finding more votes to be included in the count and than receiving a large enough proportion of those votes once their opened to overtake Al Franken's 225+ vote lead.

Well, the universe of ballots in which Coleman hopes to find more votes continued it's gradual contraction when the Secretary of State announced the results of the sorting of pile 3 ballots. Pile 3 ballots were rejected because the voter wasn't registered, these were being opened to see if the voter had placed the registration form in the secrecy envelope instead of the outer envelope.

Out of over 1500 ballots about 89 might be counted.

I say about 89 because there is some discrepancy on the exact number, 88 has also been reported, and I say might be counted because they still have to meet all of the other legal standards for absentee ballots, like the voter didn't vote in person on election day.

VoteForAmerica has a run down of these ballots by county, the long and short of it is that they are likely to be about a wash.

The only apparent good news for the Coleman team lately was the MN Supreme courts rejection of Al Franken's request for a temporary election certificate. But even this was bad news. While denying Franken's request the court also stated that they, the MN Supreme Court, are the "court of proper jurisdiction" cited in MN election law as having the final determination on the contest. In other words, you won't get to appeal to the US Supreme Court Normie.

Seemingly every day that goes by brings more bad news for Norm Coleman and I couldn't think of a more deserving fella.

Rejected absentee ballots are being counted

You can watch the action live on The Uptake. Meanwhile Nate Silver is up with an analysis of the 953 rejected absentee ballots that will be counted; he's predicting that Franken will net 31 votes, extending his lead to 80. He throws cold water on the idea that Coleman has excluded many more ballots than Franken from the counting.

The apparent edge for Franken comes as each campaign has had essentially a unilateral veto to prevent any particular absentee ballot from being opened and counted. Initially, based on a review of the process in Democratic stronghold St. Louis county, it appeared that the Coleman campaign was being far more aggressive than the Franken campaign in exercising its veto. Information gathered by additional counties by the Star Tribune, however, suggests that this may not be the case, and that the Franken campaign has been at least as aggressive as Coleman in exercising its veto.

Also the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Coleman campaigns request to put a halt to the whole thing in order for them to change the rules to their liking. Lots of action going on today.

MDE reaches new levels of hyperbole

(From Minnesota Democrats Exposed, 12/24/08)

"2.9 Million Disenfranchised"

That's the headline of the post. Can you guess why 2.9 million will be disenfranchised? Come on, one guess?

The Supreme Court ruled today that 2.9 million voters in the state of Minnesota be left disenfranchised.

Whoever guessed the Minnesota Supreme Court wins a fruitcake. Seriously, anyone want a fruitcake?

Somehow the Minnesota Supreme Court turning down Norm Coleman's petition to delay certification until the duplicate ballot issue is resolved means that all 2.9 million Minnesota voters have been disenfranchised. This is very high level critical thinking we are dealing with. 133 = 2.9 million. I don't know the exact formula used to make that calculation, but I assure you it must be some advanced statistical algorithm that was specially developed to analyze this issue.

That or Ryan pulled it out of his ass.

Even if you accept the argument that double counting could have happened, and there's no evidence that it did, it doesn't mean 2.9 million voters were disenfranchised, it means up to 133 voters got twice the enfranchisement.

Duplicate ballots have become an issue in this recount, 

And why is it that duplicate ballots have become an issue? Was anyone talking about duplicate ballots two weeks ago? No. The only reason that there is an issue is because the Coleman campaign is desperately grasping at any chance to overturn what has become increasingly inevitable, Al Franken will be certified the winner of the election.

anyone who cast a vote in this election should be gravely concerned that their vote may not matter as much as someone else.

Gravely concerned? Really? What about all the people who properly cast absentee ballots that were subsequently rejected? Should they also be gravely concerned? What about all the dead DFLers who voted? They are already gravely concerned, should they be more concerned? What's this about dead DFLers voting?

Team Franken should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for the words in their statement that was released following the Supreme Court's ruling: "We win in Supreme Court."

So let me get this straight. Norm Coleman's campaign files a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court to halt the certification. The ruling by the Supreme Court, a unanimous ruling by the way, goes in Franken's favor. The Franken campaign responds by saying that the ruling was in their favor. What part of this is shameful?

Team Franken sees winning as turning a blind eye to 2.9 million rightful votes.  Al Franken has showed that he does not care about the integrity of the process, he cares only about a title in front of his name.

This is world class hyperbole. I have wonder if there is some specialized training one needs to create such an immense monument to over the top hyperbole. Truly a sight to behold.

This has only begun what will make this process longer unfortunately.

As long as you keep up the tremendous work Ryan, this process couldn't go on long enough.

Supreme Court rules against Coleman on double counting

In an opinion written by Justice Alan Page the Minnesota Supreme court ruled that any challenges of supposed double counted ballots would need to be resolved by a court hearing, where evidence can be presented and not by the canvassing board. In the short term it means that these ballots will be counted as normal and added to the totals. If Coleman wants to press this issue he will have to file an election challenge.

This came on the heels of an earlier ruling made by the Supremes allowing local election officials more time in submitting improperly rejected absentee ballots to the State Canvassing Board. Now the local officials will have until January 2nd to submit such ballots to the Secretary of State who will have until January 4th to open and count them. On January 5th the challenging of these ballots will begin and the Canvassing board could certify a winner as early as January 6th, although that may be wishful thinking.

How ‘bout a nooner?

The counting of challenged ballots finally got underway yesterday, but the canvassing board only managed to get through 152 of the Franken campaigns challenges, with well over a thousand left to go and maybe more. The counting will resume again at 9 am and the board should finish with the Franken pile today.

At the end of the day yesterday the breakdown of the Franken campaigns challenges was 95 for Coleman (62.5%), 19 for Franken (12.5%) and 38 for other (25%). If these percentages hold Coleman would net 221 votes from the Franken challenges. Applying these percentages to the Coleman challenges is a little trickier, because there is no firm number of Coleman challenges right now.

At this point the Coleman campaign has nothing to gain by reducing its challenges, they are simply playing for time. So, they don't know how many ballots they've challenged, they are possibly adding challenges back and possibly withdrawing more. Using the number of 1000 Coleman challenges as a default and the same vote spit that Coleman is getting in Franken's challenges, Franken would net 500 votes. The difference in those two totals, 279, would give Al Franken a 91 vote margin.

In other recount news the MN Supreme court will hear arguments about whether counties need direction in how to sort improperly rejected absentee ballots (IRAB's) today at 1 pm and the Franken campaign filed suit in Olmsted county over their decision to not count a handful of absentee ballots that supposedly weren't rejected. Some counties are still sorting their rejected absentee ballots and some are schedualed to, while others are waiting for the Supreme Court ruling. At the moment, with 48 of 87 counties reporting, I still project the number of IRAB's to be around 1,150 using the Star Tribunes numbers, which doesn't match up with the almost 1,600 projection coming from the Secretary of State.

The Uptake will be live streaming for those who think five guys discussing penmanship is fun.