Posted: November 12, 2008

MN Senate Race: 11/12 Update

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, by statute a member of the state canvassing board that will certify the official results of the Coleman-Franken US Senate race, will appoint the four other members of the board today. Here's more news.

Are the "found votes" suspicious?

This article explains part of the reason why Coleman has expressed suspicion of the votes that were found: 100 votes found in one precinct in Pine County all went to Franken, and 100 votes found in a precinct in Mountain Iron all went to Franken. Furthermore, overall the vote-checking has netted 435 votes for Franken while subtracting 69 for Coleman. This article suggests that Coleman's statements could be part of a political strategy to pressure elections workers to "bend over backwards" to give Coleman the benefit of the doubt when it comes to discerning voter intent. The Franken campaign, for its part, issued a press-release with historical data suggesting that these types of changes are not unusual (for additional evidence of this, see here).

Post-election audit suggests good news for Franken

An examination of 28 of the 202 precincts statewide that were randomly selected for the Minnesota's post-election audit showed that Franken picked up 6 votes, while Coleman lost one. If this pattern holds in the full recount of 4,130 precincts, Franken may come out ahead. The article also discusses a theory that Democrats generally increase their totals disproportionately in recounts because the voters who are more likely to vote for them tend to have difficulty voting, and their intent can often only be discerned by "eyeballing" their ballots (see also here).

"Lawyering up"

This article says that Coleman will procure about 120 lawyers to observe the recount. Franken is also assembling a team.

Will this election compare to Minnesota's gubernatorial election of 1962?

The original vote count in Minnesota gubernatorial election of 1962 put the Republican ahead by 142 votes, but the recount and associated litigation eventually put the Democrat into office. Read here for more details.