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State board launches review of challenged ballots
Minnesota's incredibly tight United States Senate race entered a new phase on Tuesday in Saint Paul, as the five-member state canvassing board began to plow through hundreds of disputed ballots that arose from the statewide recount. The panel, composed of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, two Supreme Court justices and two Ramsey County judges put the eyeballs and minds to work shortly after noon and managed to examine 161 ballots. They started with the stack of ballots which had been called into question by Democrat Al Franken's campaign, most of them apparent votes for Senator Norm Coleman. The incumbent Republican led by mere 188 votes heading into the recount process, out of 2.9 million cast. As predicted by local election officials around the state at the beginning of the recount, the majority of the challenges were rejected by the board Tuesday. Senator Coleman picked up 98 votes in the process Tuesday, while Franken garnered 22. Another 41 ballots were set aside as non-votes, over-votes or disqualified by identifying marks. A ballot can be challenged during the manual recount if the voter's intent is unclear, or if it's subject to disqualification because the voter chose more than one candidate, or if the signed the ballot or left some other mark that could reveal the voter's identity. Not always on the same page Until Tuesday virtually all of the canvassing board's decisions had been unanimous, with panelists coming to a concensus. But that changed at times when actual votes were on the line. In one case Ramsey County Judge Ed Cleary argued that a mark found in the Franken oval signalled an attempt to vote for the Democrat, while Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson argued successfully that it was an errant pen mark. "I think there's quite a distinction between a small mark next to a filled in circle and a small mark inside the oval," Judge Cleary argued. Magnuson countered, "A lot of this is how the ballot strikes us, and this one strikes me as someone who put their pen on Al Franken and didn't vote." At times it was just a matter of degrees. The board counted a slightly larger mark in a Coleman oval as a Coleman vote, despite Cleary's objections. Cleary prevailed, however, on another case in which the voter scribbled a large oval in between Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley's name and Coleman's name. "This is the only vote of any of them so far that straddles two different candidates," Cleary argued, "So I would argue this is non vote, an under vote." Cleary sought to disqualify a ballot in which the voter started to fill the Franken oval, and then filled all of the Coleman oval and wrote the initials "M.J." next to Coleman's spot. "The statutes clearly states that initials next to a vote disqualifies that vote and those definitely look like initials to me," Cleary told fellow board members. But the majority saw it differently, and allowed it as a Coleman vote. "I think they're trying to tell us we goofed when we started filling in Franken," Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin said as she peered at the original ballot, "To me the intent is they meant to vote for Coleman." Magnuson agreed. "Much like when you change a legal document you initial your changes; I don't think that identifies the voter." The board also set an early pattern by refusing to disqualify ballots where voters had written multiple names into races other than the Senate race -- another common basis for challenges. The board set the tone for a common challenge, ruling that fictional characters such as Mickey Mouse appearing as write-ins weren't enough to disqualify a ballot. Many challenges for silly write-ins were flagged as having identifying marks. Timeline in doubt It became clear that meeting their self-imposed deadline of Friday night, for wrapping up work on the challenged ballots, will be in jeopardy. Campaigns continue to voluntarily withdraw scores of their challenges, which is lessening the workload somewhat. As the first day's meeting wrapped up, several board members said they thought too many of the challenges they were forced to weigh were frivolous -- and urged both campaigns to further reduce their challenges. "I'm disappointed," Judge Gearin said. "I don't think the campaigns have in fact gone through these as seriously as they should have." The overtime race pitted Coleman, the one-term incumbent and former St. Paul mayor, against Franken, who grew up in Minnesota and returned to the state in 2005 to launch a political career after finding success as a "Saturday Night Live" comic and liberal satirist. The contest between the two was hard-fought and at times ugly, and when the smoke cleared the day after the election Coleman led Franken by a tiny margin out of almost 2.9 million cast. That was close enough to automatically trigger a statewide recount, forcing both campaigns to push forward almost as if the election had never happened -- continuing to raise money, recruit volunteers and spin the media. The margin between the two candidates fluctuated, with Coleman clinging to a 215-vote edge as the recount started. By the end of the recount the gap was 188, a number dwarfed by the mountain of disputed ballots. Rejected Absentee Ballots On another front, the Minnesota Supreme Court will hold a hearing Wednesday at 1pm on the Coleman campaign's move to intervene in the sorting of rejected absentee ballots. With two justices, Eric Magnuson and G. Barry Anderson, also serving on the canvassing board that process will be placed on hold for the high court's proceeding. The Secretary of State's office last week estimated that more than 1,500 absentee ballots were rejected without cause, as opposed to more than 10,000 such ballots that were disqualified properly. In a move applauded by the Franken campaign, the canvassing board last Friday recommended that all 87 county election directors sort through their piles of rejected absentee ballots, and set aside those which were "allegedly wrongfully rejected" -- to use the phrase board members used in their motion. The Coleman campaign filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to block that process for fear that all 87 counties, and 43 larger cities holding those ballots could apply inconsistent standards. The Coleman campaign is asking could a uniform set of ground rules could be developed by the court, to be applied by all of the local officials sorting rejected absentee ballots. State law provides four reasons for rejecting absentee ballots, the most common of which is that the ballot arrived at the county election office too late to be taken to the voter's home precinct on Election Day. They can also be rejected if election officials can't find a matching name in the registration rolls, if the signature on the absentee application doesn't match the signature on record, or if the absentee voter and/or the witness fails to sign the application. If the error is discovered in time, the voter is notified by mail or by phone and given another opportunity to case an absentee ballot. If it's discovered too late, the ballot is set aside and not counted on election day. Normally those disqualified ballots escape the public's attention, but in a race this tight the Franken campaign went to court to gain access to the rolls of rejected absentee ballots. That led to the discovery of voters who followed the rules but nonetheless still lost their chance to participate. Since that issue was first raised at the state canvassing board, local election officials have discovered more than 600 absentee ballots that were rejected without good reason. At least two members of the canvassing board have argued publicly that those ballots should be counted, and added to the mix. But, because that panel is not a judicial body, it lacks the ability to conduct "findings of fact" and call sworn witnesses and hold formal hearings. The members also believe they lack the power to order local officials to sort through their rejected ballots and count them. That didn't stop them, however, from encouraging local election officials to create a so-called "fifth pile" of absentee ballots that were wrongfully tossed from contention. Some 5,000 challenges were withdrawn before the canvassing board began its work. The Secretary of State's office hadn't immediately processed those withdrawn challenges to give them to Coleman or Franken where appropriate.
Click here to see a disputed ballot from Aitkin County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Beltrami County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Cook County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Crow Wing County Click here to see a disputed ballot from the city of Hopkins Click here to see a disputed ballot from Douglas County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Faribault County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Kandiyohi County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Mahnomen County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Nicollet County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Olmsted County Click here to see a disputed ballot from Washington County (Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press and KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
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