Completely Unnecessary

Looks like the end of the day Thursday might leave Coleman and Franken about even in the Minnesota recount.

As 538 noted in their lunchtime roundup, numbers are all over the place and guesses about who’s ”winning’ need to be taken with a grain of salt.*

The additional problem, as I discussed yesterday, is the original vs duplicated ballots.

According to Silver, ‘dozens’ of Coleman challenges have been put in the ‘blue folder’ to be dealt with later. Presumably, some of the Franken challenges that were ruled on will have to be taken out of the pile and rejudged.

How many Franken challenges need to be checked (and what their determination was) remains unclear.

(There’s also now a ‘green folder’, but no one seems to know what it’s for…)

Wow. For some reason I really want them to end the day with a nice clean tie. They’ve got six minutes; I wish they’d stop arguing!

Dang, fail:

However, the Strib guys have just pointed out that the 5000 or so withdrawn challenges have yet to be awarded to either candidate. Those will be mostly votes the candidate had on election night that were temporarily removed from his total.

I think it’s fair to say that this thing is going to court. For an entire host of reasons.

[The Strib guys are chatting about the plate of cookies they've put on their table in solidarity with the cookies on the Canvassing Board's table. I lived in MN for years, but I swear I understand Australian humor better than Minnesotan.]

* - here’s my grain: Franken had two days of challenges, and Coleman appears to have more challenges overall. It only took one day for Franken to catch up to Coleman. Unless Coleman has a very good day tomorrow, it seems that Franken will have the lead at the end of the recount. Keep the blue folder/procedural challenges in mind, though. We’re all of those pro-Coleman votes? We just don’t know.

Vaguely Related

• Minnesota Senate Recount Canvassing Board - Day Two
• Minnesota Recount Limbo - Original vs Duplicated Ballots

Well curse it if Donald Rumsfeld wasn’t right.

Turns out that there were some unknown unknowns in the MN recount today. (Nate Silver runs us through the known knowns and the known unknowns.)

About the four o’clock hour - and just when the panel thought it might be able to break early before getting a fresh start on Coleman’s challenges tomorrow - the lawyers started wrangling.

At issue is the question of original versus duplicated ballots.

I might be messing this up a bit because it’s complicated and I only had the audio on in the background, but it appears that in MN duplicate ballots can be created by election judges when there is an issue with a voter’s ballot.

From what they were arguing, it seems as though the election judge can fill it out exactly as the voter did in an attempt to get a proper read through the machine.

There appear to be some numbering issues between the original and duplicate ballots. They should all line up, but some have been misnumbered, etc.

This wouldn’t be a problem (because in a standard count, the election judge would make sure that only the duplicates were counted), except that the two campaigns fought vociferously that the original ballots be used for the recount.

(The Board made sure to note that the two campaigns argued for this against the advice of everyone who knows anything about elections in MN).

The upshot is that a poorly numbered duplicate ballot that was successful during the machine count might be counted again as the original during the hand recount.

The Coleman campaign wanted the Canvassing Board to deal with the issue, though they (and Team Franken) argued that it wasn’t really their jurisdiction. The Board is only there to judge the ballots that have been challenged, not to police the actions of individual counties.

The bigger problem is that the Board has already done all the Franken challenges, meaning that any changes to which ballots are under consideration might necessitate going back through those ballots (or at least trying to figure out which ones they are).

It was unclear (at least to me) what kind of numbers we might be talking about here. Five, dozens, hundreds?

And if it is a state-wide problem, the campaign that loses might have a compelling legal argument to start the recount all over again. From the beginning.

If, of course, it is even possible to match up all those original and duplicated ballots.

Instant. Runoff. Voting, people.

[No one else finds this interesting, right?]

Update: The Canvassing Board is going to review this issue today. According to the Strib’s color commentary, it seems like about 150 ballots might have been affected by the original vs duplicate issue.

As they pointed out, the Coleman campaign clearly feels that they were largely Franken double votes, as they’re pushing hard to have them found and dealt with. Team Franken is arging against. Democracy!

Vaguely Related

• Minnesota Senate Recount Canvassing Board - Day Two
• Franken/Coleman Recount Nearly Tied

I’m really not watching this constantly, I swear.

But kinda.

Team Franken has been withdrawing challenges throughout the day, with an apparent rise in goodwill towards the Franken campaign.

The lawyers are rarely allowed to talk, but Franken’s counsel seems to be getting less snippy responses when he tries to intercede.

In addition, yesterday’s challenges seemed to be largely Franken challenges on Coleman votes, many of which were rejected.

So Coleman’s total is reflecting a large number of votes that were in his pile at the end of the first Election Day count. (Similarly, Franken’s total should jump once they start looking at Coleman challenges on Franken votes.)

I don’t know how the order of these challenges is determined, but today there seems to be a larger number of votes that were deemed overvotes in the recount that are now being determined for Franken. He’s definitely picking up some votes.

That’s a pretty simple statement, but there’s an important distinction:

1. Coleman’s increasing total is largely the result of the reallocation of votes he already had on Election Day;
2. Franken’s increasing total is reflective of new votes, which will actually cut into Coleman’s lead.

Obviously, we can expect to see some of this happen for Coleman when his challenges are reviewed.

The real question is which campaign has more of these vote-gaining challenges.

Last month, 538 took a look at the four different types of challenges and the likely results. (The challenged vote totals have changed significantly since Silver wrote this up, so his assessments may be invalid at this point.)

In crazy Minnesota voter news - someone took the time to draw a perfectly straight line down the middle of all the ovals in every race, except president. As in, they clearly used a straight edge.

Apparently someone also wrote, “God help us” on their ballot. Why can’t people just go in and vote?

Here’s the one they just looked at. For serious.

Someone else filled in the oval next to every presidental candidate except for Obama and Nader.

Voting by the masses may or may not be an overrated idea.

Vaguely Related

• Franken/Coleman Recount Nearly Tied
• Minnesota Recount Limbo - Original vs Duplicated Ballots

It’s being streamed live and is surprisingly good watching. The canvassing board going through each of the around 3000 challenged ballots one by one.

The video is interesting because they’re doing a good job of showing each ballot as it’s being voted on, so you - the powerless citizen - can watch the process at work (read: vocalize your agreement or dissent at your computer).

Plus you get to watch the occasional ‘Minnesota nice’/passive aggressive comment about how they need more coffee and wouldn’t this have all been easier if there weren’t so many challenges.

For those of you with, you know, more interesting things to do or actual responsibilities, you can simply refresh the Strib’s count.

Keep in mind that Franken’s challenges are being assessed today, so the discrepancy between the number of votes allocated to Coleman versus Franken will likely change.

By the way, idiots who have complicated this process by writing things like “Chuck Norris” randomly on their ballots are amongst our truly dumb. Voting for Coleman and then writing in “GOD” below is sort of weirdly funny, but is costing MN lots of money.

Update: Another Chuck Norris. Why? And also this:

There’s also a vote for Barkley where someone wrote “<— NOT HIM” next to his name and also bubbled in Coleman. Voter intent determined!

Vaguely Related

• Minnesota Senate Recount Canvassing Board - Day Two
• Franken/Coleman Recount Nearly Tied

Oh, hurrah.

New Senator-elect Mark Beigch has defeated Ted Stevens, bringing the total number of Democrats in the new Senate to 58 (at least once the NYT updates its map).

The Anchorage mayor currently leads by 3724 votes, more than the 2500 left to count. (And it’s more than Stevens lead at the end of Election Night.)

And we’re keeping Lieberman, so if Franken and Martin manage to win their recount and runoff, respectively, Democrats will have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Does that make Ted Stevens happy?

[I'll have you know I uploaded that damn thing to YouTube, realizing that it might be my last chance to use it.]

[Actually, I will never tire of that one second clip.]

Um, in other news, I finished my marking - a task made all the more difficult by the fact that this exists.

Vaguely Related

• Presidential-Elect Obama and We Wait for Results
• As McCain Implodes, Think of a Senate 60

As Avi so delicately put it this morning, “This is what happens when you buy surplus Russian stuff…”

Nearly 30% of Alaskan ballots have yet to be counted - including absentee and questioned ballots.

Yes, that sounds like a LOT.

Here’s another way of thinking about it: as of yesterday, there were 90,635 freaking votes left to count.

Lefty blogs are tksing because of the large number of late entries and the fact that - despite two high profile congressional races and their governor on the ballot for VP - voter turnout appears lower than 2004.

According to election officials, ballots trickling in late isn’t terribly new. The state is enormous and each ballot must be hand-delivered by moose.

But most elections weren’t hinging on a 3,000-vote lead by a Senatorial felon and a 17,000-vote lead by a representative who is almost certain to be indicted this year.

As to the low vote totals, that’s something I’m sure we can hash out in the courts for years and years.

Speaking of ballot counting and legal action - the Minnesota recount will soon be underway. Republican Norm Coleman’s lead has dropped from 725 votes last week to just 206 yesterday.

538’s been doing the math, and, according to Nate Silver’s most recent projections, Franken might just pull it off (or, hilariously, tie - since Silver has the magic number at 206, which then promptly became the amount of Coleman’s lead.)

By the way: one of my favorite parts of the election cycle was Norm Coleman encouraging Franken to forgo his right to an ‘expensive’ ($90,000) recount with a difference of 0.01% between the candidates.

Coleman said he would conceded if the count had been reversed, a statement somewhat belied by the number of lawyers he’s just hired for the recount.

Vaguely Related

• Presidential-Elect Obama and We Wait for Results
• Stevens Loses Senate Seat

You know, I was really thought the best part of election night was the promise of never hearing from Sarah Palin again.

It seems I was wrong - as the McCain camp is going to try like hell to lay his political disaster at her feet. (Plus, she wanted to give her own concession speech - ick).

So, now, we’re going to have days - if not weeks - of back and forth. This means we’re going to have to keep hearing from Sarah Palin, since objectivity demands right of response.

And some of the allegations are pretty absurd - that she didn’t know Africa was a continent or the three countries of NAFTA. Her response to that was pretty smart, actually:

Asked about the Fox report that she did not know the NAFTA members or that Africa was a continent, Palin said, “If they’re an unnamed source, that says it all. I won’t comment on anyone’s gossip based on anonymous sources. That’s kind of a small of a bitter type of person who anonymously would charge that I didn’t know an answer to a question. So until I know who’s talking about it, I won’t have a comment on a false allegation.”

But what I find interesting - and, god help me, I’m defending Sarah Palin - is the type of Palin quotes the media prints. General journalistic practice is to ‘clean up’ colloquialisms and misspeaks. There have been numerous debates during the Bush II presidency over just how much clean up is appropriate, given his frequent mangling of the English language.

The idea is that politicians often speak off the cuff, and this sometimes makes their sentence structure awkward for print media. With Palin, however, the print media seems content to leave clean up alone.

ABC used these quotes:

“I don’t think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit, that I would trump an economic, woeful time in this nation that occurred about two months ago, that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain’s loss to me,” Palin told reporters in Arizona Wednesday.

“Now, having said that, if I cost John McCain even one vote, I’m sorry about that because John McCain I believe is the American hero. I had believed that it was his time. … He being so full of courage and wisdom and experience, that valor he just embodies, I believe he would’ve been the best pick, but that is not the Americans’ choice at this time.”

The first paragraph has a completely redundant clause, the repetition of which only makes her seem like an idiot. An ellipse after ‘credit’ and then picking up with, ‘that my presence…’ would have been sufficient. And I know they’re content using ellipses because they do it in the second paragraph.

As for that second paragraph, they’re doing two things. One is not helping her out with commas, such as around ‘I believe’, which would help readers break her sentences down. It reads as though it’s just pouring out of her mouth. Secondly, ‘He being so full of courage…’ should have been edited to start the sentence with ‘Being…’.

And I think it would have been edited if a different politician were being quoted.

Look, Sarah Palin is not particularly well-spoken. But if you transcribe the long, roundabout sentences used by most politicians - and I’m looking at you, Joe Biden - word for word, they all sound like idiots.

I’m not going to go so far as to accuse the media of belittling Palin in a sexist manner, but it’s clear they don’t like her. She’s going to be a punching bag for months - and she’s certainly earned some of it.

But Palin’s right, if she’s being accused of something, the media shouldn’t be attributing it to anonymous sources. The ABC story I’ve read doesn’t use a single attributed quote.

And most of the article is reporting on what other media outlets have reported with anonymous sources. It’s a media feedback loop - ABC reports what NYT and Newsweek reported, and, put through enough cycles, it’s legitimate news without ever having been attributed to a named source.

Obviously, the best way to deal with this is to ignore Sarah Palin and never interview or talk about her again.

Vaguely Related

• Brooks on Palin’s Debate Performance
• The Toxic Mess on Main Street - The VP Debate

Wow.

It hasn’t really sunk in yet. (And I know for sure my that right-wing taxi driver tonight hasn’t come to terms with the Obama win).

I was down at the rally tonight and, instead of the pushy morass you’d expect, everyone was lovely and amazing. It was a fabulous night. I hugged strangers (and also some people I’d gone to high school with).

We’re still waiting on Proposition 8 in CA (which would ban gay marriage); it is not looking good in California.

Oregon’s Jeff Merkley is still hanging in the balance - and the NYT’s map, which I lauded in my last post, doesn’t have the cities labeled. I have to figure out for myself where the hell Portland lives, county-wise.

Indiana looks like it’s polled for the Democrats - an amazing feat, due largely, I expect, to Illinois pull in Gary. [Update - Indiana is ours. That's just insane.]

We’re still waiting on Missouri and North Carolina and Montana - though I expect Montana to go for McCain. Fox seems to be reporting that parts of Nebraska are still out (Nebraska splits its electoral votes). [Update as I'm writing - Nebraska's 2nd has gone to Obama (via 538, whose permalink is broken).] [Further Update - they're pulling that call...]

Meanwhile in MN, does Al Franken have enough votes in Hennepin County to close the 1400 votes separating him from Norm Coleman? St Louis County also hasn’t fully reported, and they look to be heavily Franken. [Update 2:30am - looks like Franken might pull it off, by about 1000 votes. He's still going strong in St Louis and Hennepin, whilst the counties still reporting for Coleman have much lower numbers.]

As to Alaska, I don’t actually believe that convicted felon Stevens is winning against Mark Begich. Since I’ve last looked, it’s closed a bit more, so another nail biter. [Update - Unless Anchorage hasn't weighed in yet - I'm having a trouble finding a map that breaks the state down - Alaska is freaking insane. Young is also winning with 72% reporting.]

And in Oregon - looks like Merkley (D) might just beat out the 25th Udall cousin, Gordon Smith (R). Looking at 47.3% vs 47.1% as I’m writing…

Update: Propositions results - looks like Prop 8 is winning, i.e., people have voted ‘yes’ to a gay marriage ban; IL’s con-con failed; Florida defined marriage (as between a man and a woman); and Arkanas saw fit to ban all unwed couples (though targeting gay couples) from adopting or fostering children. (Nice work, Arkanas; more kids to sit in the system!)

Vaguely Related

• 30 Percent of Alaskan Votes Still Uncounted and the Minnesota Recount
• Stevens Loses Senate Seat

From Huffington Post.

Again, I blog because I’m too lazy to del.icio.us.

Have a good sleep, everyone - tomorrow’s gonna be a doozy. (I know I’m up at four am…)

No matter who you support - please get out there and vote tomorrow!

Google can help you find your polling place.

Vaguely Related

• Stevens Loses Senate Seat
• Privacy and Publicity at the GOP Convention

Green Party candidate Jeremy Karpen is facing off against three-term incumbent Maria Antonia ‘Toni’ Berrios in the 39th District for the Illinois House of Representatives.

For Green Party faithful, this is a no-brainier. As a life-long Democrat, however, I also believe Berrios needs to go.

Here’s the deal: She’s a good person and her heart’s in the right place, but she’s an installed representative - the nepotism of her father, Joe Berrios, earned her the seat - and she’s just not as effective as she ought to be.

Karpen has been endorsed by the Sun Times:

This Northwest Side district has been represented by Maria Antonia “Toni” Berrios since 2003, when her father, the Cook County Democratic chairman, installed her in the job. She’s inexperienced and not considered a productive legislator. We prefer Green candidate Jeremy Karpen, a therapist for troubled youth at a residential treatment center in Chicago. He strongly supports school finance reform and increased funding for mass transit and has some innovative ideas on campaign finance and electoral reform. [emphasis original]

I also wrote about the race for Gapers Block back in August.

In an ideal world, votes should always be for the candidate rather than the party - if the party hasn’t earned one’s loyalty with good candidates, voters should go elsewhere. In this case, I hope they flock to the Greens.

Put simply, Karpen deserves it; Berrios doesn’t.

[Disclosure: I am a friend of Karpen's and have been campaigning for him for the last couple days.]

Vaguely Related

• Jen Marshall’s Cook County Voting Tips
• Illinois and Chicago Voting Information - General Election 2008