Campaigns reload for recount battle

Armistice Day brought only a brief truce in what will be a protracted recount battle in Minnesota's senate race.

Heading into the recount Republican Senator Norm Coleman is holds onto his lead over Democrat Al Franken, but it's now down to 206 votes or roughly 1/100th of one percent of the 2.9 million cast.

Click here for updated Senate race results.

And those election judges and county staffers sifting through all those paper ballot will never get lonely. In addition to the media onlookers, they'll be joined by lawyers and campaign activists.

"What we anticipate is that we are going to have at least one if not two people at every table where the count is happening," Coleman campaign attorney and former Republican State Senator Fritz Knaak told reporters, "And we anticipate that we are going to have at least one lawyer at every location."

That would be 120 lawyers. The Franken campaign doesn't anticipate a large legion of lawyers, but will make sure to supply qualified volunteers to match the Coleman observers at the local county offices where the hand recount will be conducted beginning next week.

The Coleman campaign has launched a flurry of news releases in the past six days casting suspicion on the canvassing process, and concerns about alleged irregularities.

So far, however, no hard evidence of any fraud by election officials or voters has emerged. And the Franken campaign has pointed to historical election data, showing that the gap often changes between the unofficial tallies on Election Day and the official canvassing results.

Knaak said he remains concerned, but hopeful that the coming recount will serve as a model to the world.

"If it's done right, if it's done in accordance with the rules," he remarked, "I think that this will end up being a textbook example of how a recount can be conducted."

Somali Steering Alleged

At a separate news conference Tuesday afternoon, longtime Somali activist and Coleman supporter Omar Jamal screened clips of home video shot on Election Day at the Brian Coyle Community Center in southeast Minneapolis.

There were no independent Somali translators there to interpret the tape for the media, but Jamal said it served as evidence to back up his claim that other Somali volunteers were steering Obama supporters to vote for Franken as well.

An unidentified Somali man is seen on the tape moving among the voters while talking on a cell phone, which is normally prohibited at polling places. But, then again, shooting home video is normally also outside the rules.

"I couldn't see anything definitively illegal," Hamline University School of Law professor Joseph Daly told reporters after viewing the clips, "Except the videotape seems odd to me; I don't understand how the videotape was in there or what authority they had to do that."

Jamal is asking that the Hennepin County Attorney's office investigate what was caught on tape, as well as eye witness accounts provided to Jamal by Somali voters.

"We are not the judges," Jamal said, "But we ask the county to look what we found and what seems to us to be some complete irregularities."

While he saw no direct evidence of fraud on Jamal's tape, Professor Daly said the election judges should've enforced the cell phone rule, which applies to judges, interpreters and those allowed inside the polls as partisan challengers.

"The election judge should've come over and said turn that cell phone off, and who are you?" Daly noted it's unclear from the video whether the Somalis that Jamal is objecting to were there in an official capacity as interpreters, or whether they simply walked in without any clearance.

One of the men seen on tape wore an ID badge on a lanyard which read, "Abdul Ibrahim: Somali Action Alliance GOTV Volunteer."

GOTV is the acronym for Get Out The Vote. The executive director of the Somali Action Alliance, Hashi Shafi, told KARE 11 that his organization's volunteers had worked on registration drives with new citizens, and had gone to the polls as a matter of following up to explain the process and act as translators.

"They absolutely did not tell anyone who to vote for," Shafi told KARE when reached by phone at a conference in California, "They were there to help out anyway they could." Shafi said none of the volunteers knew they weren't supposed to be inside the polling place, and when asked to leave they left. "You must understand that our effort to get Somalis engaged in the election was not partisan in any way."

Coleman's Somali Staffer

On Election Day reporter Molly Priesmeyer of The Minnesota Independent online post snapped a shot of Mahamoud Wardere, a member of Coleman's Senate staff, at the same polling place.

Priesmeyer reported that as soon as Wardere arrived at the Brian Coyle Center he began to interact with voters and the volunteers from the Somali Action Alliance.

She reported that the volunteers tried to assure election judges they were simply there to act as interpreters, but two white Republican poll challengers accused those volunteers of interfering with voters.

Priesmeyer reported that Wardere left the actual room where the confrontations were occurring, but remained in the foyer of the building throughout the day "greeting and conversing with people."

Some Somali voters told Priesmeyer they'd been instructed to vote for Coleman, but none of them named names or in anyway identified the person who gave those instructions.

By John Croman, KARE 11 News

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