Pile 2 + Pile 5 = Lots of room for improvement

Overlooked in the hoopla about improperly rejected absentee ballots, is the large number of properly rejected absentee ballots that appear to have been rejected for nothing more than what I would consider bureaucratic reasons. Using the results from precincts that have completed their sorting we see that almost 75% of the rejected absentee ballots, the combination of pile's 2 and 5, were rejected for bureaucratic or clerical reasons.

Here is a visual description of Minnesota's absentee ballot process for those not familiar with it and a look at the different reasons for an absentee ballot to be rejected.

Pile 1 - The voters name or address on the return envelope is different than the name or address on the absentee application. At the current rate these would equal a total of 795 votes.

Pile 2 - The voter's signature on return envelope and application do not match/or certificate not complete, usually meaning no signature. At the current rate these would equal a total of 5,881 votes.

Pile 3 - The voter is not registered and there is no registration card included in the return application. At the current rate these would equal a total of 1,379 votes.

Pile 3a - The voter is not registered, although there appears to be a registration card in the secrecy envelope. At the current rate these would equal a total of 41 votes.

Pile 4 - The voter already voted. At the current rate these would equal a total of 267 votes.

Pile 5 - Mistakenly rejected. At the current rate these would equal a total of 1150 votes.

There is some slop in these numbers right now. At current projections there will be a total of 9,314 absentee ballots that were rejected. The Secretary of State estimates that there are a total of 12,000 rejected ballots. So, if anything, these projections are conservative and underestimate the final numbers by as much as 30%.

When you look at those piles though what sticks out?

Pile 2 represents 63% of the rejected absentee ballots, clearly the dominate group. There is no distinction in the data between the two conditions that comprise pile 2, the signature not matching and the certificate not being filled out completely, but they are totally different errors that require the election official to make completely different types of judgments. Rejecting a ballot because the certificate is not complete is a bureaucratic decision, rejecting a ballot because the signatures do not match is an entirely subjective decision. It would be interesting to know what the split is between these two types of rejected ballots.

The problem of a certificate not being filled out points to less than effective ballot instructions. Most of these instances were people not signing the return envelope at all, which may be due to confusion about instructions not to leave any identifying marks on the ballots themselves. It shouldn't be too difficult to design better absentee ballot packaging to help reduce this number in the future. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie acknowledged this point on Almanac saying that absentee ballots need to be less complicated for voters and poll workers.

The other reason for ballots ending up in pile 2, a signature not matching, is a completely subjective judgment and one bound to be susceptible to human error and bias. It is impossible to apply consistent statewide standards to this matter; every person who compares two signatures is likely to have a slightly different opinion on their similarity. This is the number I am interested in finding out, how many of these rejected absentee ballots were rejected because the signatures didn't match.

If anything there needs to be clarification in the process for rejecting a ballot because of the signatures not matching, just so that at least some of the variables from county to county can be controlled. What I'm talking about, for example, would be a requirement that at least two election officials agree that the signatures do not match and then the ballot is forwarded to the State Canvassing board for a decision. It seems that any part of the process that is in any way subjective should involve as many different opinions as possible so that the correct decision can be arrived at.

It's good that pile 5 will apparently be counted, no one should have their properly cast vote not count because of a clerical error, that said there is little excuse for any ballots ending up in the fifth pile. In St. Louis County, for example, 127 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected because the signature line lacked a date. It wasn't till they started sorting their rejected absentee ballots that St. Louis County election officials bothered to find out what the state law actually says. It turns out that there is no requirement that the signature be dated. This is the sort of thing that shouldn't happen and is the direct result of a lack of training. Luckily this is an easy problem to solve.

On his Almanac appearance Ritchie blamed the problems we've seen with the absentee ballot system primarily on the vast increase in people voting by absentee ballot this year. What this would indicate to me is the need for Minnesota to follow the lead of states like North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and Georgia in offering early voting, which would ease strains on the absentee ballot system and help to decrease the long lines on election day.

It's too bad that so many votes will not be counted though. If changes are made to make the system better as a result, that will be a positive outcome, otherwise almost 6,000 ballots will be cast aside in one of the closest elections in Minnesota history for what would seem to be rather dubious reasons.

Recount Update.

Al Franken got some good news today when the State Canvassing board unanimously decided to include improperly rejected absentee ballots, by some estimates expected to be as high as 1,600, in the final recount total. Also decided were two Hennepin county ballot quandaries. The election night results will stand in place of the missing ballots in ward 3, precinct 1, and the 12 uncounted absentee ballots will be counted as part of the fifth pile count.

The decision regarding the IRAB's, which has been at the center of the Franken campaigns recount efforts, is big news. It's still unknown how counties who have previously refused to sort their rejected absentee ballots, like Ramsey, will respond. The State Canvassing board did not require county election officials to sort the rejected absentee ballots, only asked them to. The new wrinkle added was that the Canvassing board also instructed counties to open the IRAB's, count them, and include them in the election totals. The Canvassing board will than make the decision to include them in the final tally or not.

With these ruling's it's exceedingly unlikely that this won't end up in court. Even the Canvassing board seemed resigned to the fact that no matter what action is taken, on either issue, court proceedings will follow.

Minnesota Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson had this to say about including the election night results from ward 3, precinct 1:

"Some court, some judge, somewhere, may reach a different conclusion. That's how the process works."

Shortly after the Canvassing board meeting the Coleman campaign announced they would ask the State Supreme court to require counties follow consistent standards when counting the IRAB's, the first in what is sure to be a long series of court challenges as the Coleman campaign now switches to a defensive position. Without the inclusion of the IRAB's it was going to come down to the wire and all rest on the Canvassing board's interpretation of the challenged ballots. Now it looks as though Al Franken may be the clear favorite to win the recount.

The actual vote totals of the IRAB's remains unknown, but according to pre-election polling, Franken was running at about an 8% advantage in early/absentee voting. The total number of IRAB's also remains unknown, the Star Tribune is currently reporting the total at 692, but estimates range from 1,000 to 1,600. In analysis posted yesterday I projected the final IRAB total at 970. Adding today's updated numbers into the mix that projection now stands at 1,038.

But wait, there's this. In Duluth about 40% of the city's 319 rejected absentee ballots, or about 127, were rejected improperly. This is far above the 10% IRAB rate seen statewide, apparently the reason was election officials misunderstanding of what constitutes a properly signed ballot, dated or not. St Louis County has yet to report but this would add about 95 extra votes to the projection, taking it to 1,133. If Al Franken wins the IRAB's by 8%, that is a 90 vote margin, at 5% Franken would net 56 votes. Either outcome would likely be decisive.

In light of this good news word is that the Franken camp will be withdrawing 750 more challenged ballots. This is a no brainer as the Canvassing board clearly seemed upset about the volume of challenges it was facing.  Secretary of State Mark Ritchie made his feelings clear.

"I'm not happy about this."

The ballot challenges were part of gamesmanship that was going on during the recount and now that things are moving in Franken's favor he has no need to play that game anymore.  I wouldn't be surprised to see the Franken campaign withdraw even more challenges.  On the other hand there is no incentive for the Coleman campaign to withdraw anymore challenges because they will want to stall as much as possible, hoping for vindication in the courts.

Previously I predicted that the Canvassing board would punt on the IRAB's and let the courts deal with the issue in an effort to avoid possible litigation. Instead the Canvassing board, it appears, has the goal of counting all the votes and not doing whatever it can to avoid eventual litigation. For that I applaud them. In the final analysis Minnesota voters who properly cast a ballot should not be denied that vote for bureaucratic or clerical reasons. 

Next up, adjudicating the challenged ballots.

What's ahead for the recount?

Things will start to get interesting again in the Senate recount on Friday. That's when the Canvassing Board will meet to decide on the fate of rejected absentee ballots as well as figure out what to do about the 133 missing ballots in ward 3, precinct 1. Also up in the air, the 12 uncounted absentee ballots from Hennepin county found during the search for those 133 missing ballots. Hey, we're not Florida, we just visit in winter.

What to do with the pile of improperly rejected absentee ballots will prove the most consequential decision. It seems likely, as there is precedent for it, that the election night machine results will be used in place of the 133 missing ballots in Hennepin County. As for the 12 uncounted absentee ballots, if they're counted the most votes either candidate could realistically hope to net from those would be 3 or 4. If the candidates garner the same support as they did in Hennepin County as a whole (using election night results) Franken would gain 6 votes, Coleman 4.3 and Barkley 1.5, for a net Franken gain of 1.7 votes.  

As you'll recall Secretary of State Ritchie asked all of the election officials to sort through rejected absentee ballots and divide them into five piles, with the so called fifth pile representing absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected. Right now the Star Tribune is reporting that election officials have found 244 improperly rejected absentee ballots, with only 14 of the 87 counties done sorting. However some counties aren't sorting at all. 

Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky had this to say about why his county had decided against sorting absentee ballots:

"(Our) advice is, we probably need some direction from a court."

Only 56 counties are listed on the sorting schedule on the Secretary of State's website. Five, it appears, have decided not to sort their rejected absentee ballots at all, being listed as "will not participate." That leaves 16 counties that may or may not sort their ballots. With all that said the majority of counties are sorting their rejected absentee ballots and 14 counties have completed this process representing 15% of the pre-recount vote total. From this information we can extrapolate how many ballots will be in the final total under a few different scenarios.

First we need to figure out the rate of improperly rejected absentee ballots, or IRAB's. To do this I will only use data from counties that have completed sorting their rejected absentee ballots, as those counties in the process of sorting don't provide data about how many ballots they've sorted through, only how many IRAB's they've found. In the counties that have completed their sorting 150 IRAB's have been found, out of 45,241 total absentee ballots, for an IRAB rate of .0033.

Scenario 1 is that all improperly rejected absentee ballots are counted in all counties. There were a total of 292,535 absentee ballots counted in the original count, apply our IRAB rate and we get an additional 970 ballots being included in the total under this scenario, which is close to the Franken campaigns estimates that there were 1,000 such ballots. Scenario 1, however, looks to be the least likely scenario barring court action, though under those circumstances it might be the most likely outcome.

Scenario 2 occurs if we accept that only the counties listed on the sorting schedule provided by the Secretary of State will actually sort their ballots, and that those sorted ballots will be counted. Under this scenario 676 rejected absentee ballots will get added to the ballot totals. 

Scenario 3 is that the Canvassing board decides not to count the IRAB's at all. This is the most likely scenario, mainly because the other two scenarios are unlikely. Since not all the counties have sorted their rejected absentee ballots scenario 1 is physically impossible and I don't think the ad-hoc approach of scenario 2 will fly with members of the Canvassing board. For those reasons they'll probably decide that it's better to leave it to the courts to sort this matter out.

In an analysis of this issue a few weeks ago Nate Sliver predicted that if there were 1,000 IRAB's, Al Franken would gain 25-100 votes. The current IRAB rate suggests that will be the case, meaning this will only grow larger as an issue no matter what happens. If the Canvassing Board decides to count these ballots expect the Coleman campaign to go apeshit.

So my predictions are; the election night totals get used in ward 3, precinct 1, the 12 uncounted absentee ballots will be counted and what to do about the IRAB's will be left up to the courts. If all of that is correct then we're back to waiting for the challenged ballots to be adjudicated to learn who the winner is of the pre-trial phase.