ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The gap between Republican Senator Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger Al Franken narrowed substantially Thursday, with Coleman's lead now down to only two votes according to the latest tally by the Associated Press.
This came on third day of the State Canvassing Board's review of ballots challenged by the campaigns during the statewide recount, which ended two weeks ago. As many election experts predicted from the outset, most of the challenges have been rejected by the panel which is made up of two Supreme Court justices, two Ramsey County judges and the Secretary of State.
So on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the board eyeballed ballots challenged by the Franken camp and threw out many of those claims, Coleman's lead appeared to rise. On Thursday Franken's numbers climbed as the board began to toss many of Coleman's challenges.
Coleman's campaign predicted that Franken will actually take the lead at some point during the Canvassing Board's odyssey, but they say that will only be a temporary illusion. They say that's because the Franken challenges of Coleman votes that were withdrawn prior to the board's meetings haven't been added back into the vote totals yet, and when they are Senator Coleman will be back on top in the disputed election.
Lizard People and StoogesAt one point Thursday the four judges and one secretary of state were left to discuss three stooges. "This is the three stooges ballot," Ramsey County Judge Ed Cleary said as he passed the ballot down the line toward the other board members, "I'm not sure who won here, Larry, Curly or Moe." The voter had scribbled Larry, Curly or Moe as write-in candidates in virtually every race, except for the Senate race. That was a vote for Franken, which was challenged by the Coleman camp based on the notion that Larry, Curly or Moe were "identifying marks" meant to reveal the voter's identity and thereby void the ballot. But the board gave the vote back to Franken, and noted that the same voter wrote in "Nickel Bag" in one of the races, which is an old street slang used in drug transactions. "I'm sure Nickel Bag is a rap artist of some kind," Supreme Court Chief Justice and board member Eric Magnuson deadpanned, provoking a roll of laughter around the room. Coleman's campaign also challenged a ballot from Sauk Rapids with a write-in for "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and "FSM" in several of other races. That's a term created by critics of the Intelligent Design theory of the creation of the universe. But the board put the vote ballot back in the Franken column, based on the noting that Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a real person trying of identify himself. A Mankato area voter added the suffix "stin" to Franken's name on the ballot, in an apparent effort to spell Frankenstein. The person filled in Franken's oval, but the Coleman campaign challenged it as an identifying mark. The board rejected that challenge, and let it stand as Franken vote. But the Franken voter from Beltrami County who wrote "Lizard People" all over his ballot essentially ruined his chance to vote for the Democrat. He wrote-in Lizard People as write-in in the Senate race, and left that oval blank while filling the Franken oval. And while the electronic ballot scanners would count that as a Franken vote because that was the only oval filled, the canvassing board saw that as vote for both Franken and Lizard People. And, as such, it became an "over vote" which won't be counted for any candidate. In many cases guessing the voter's intent came down to a total judgment call. For instance one voter put both and X inside Franken's oval and darkened that oval too. An X all by itself would be interpreted as a vote for Franken, but the X inside a black oval created confusion. Did the person vote for Franken and decide to X it out? Or did the voter write the X first, and then decide to fill in the oval after reading the instructions more carefully? The machine on Election Day saw it as Franken vote, because no other ovals were filled in for that race. But the Canvassing Board decided the intent was impossible to determine, so they ruled it was a non-vote and took it away from the Democrat.
Duplicate ballots double count?The Coleman campaign again complained to the Canvassing Board Thursday that the current recount may be tainted by an error in handling duplicate ballots. The duplicates are created by local elections judges, both Republicans and Democrats, to temporarily replace ballots that can't be fed into the scanning machines on election day. Those are typically absentees ballots that are damaged in the process, or e-mail ballots printed overseas and mailed back to Minnesota. Duplicates are supposed to be clearly marked, kept with the originals, and in most cases not counted during the local recount process. Attorney Tom Trimble said he's worried that hundreds of those copies were never labeled as duplicates and added to the mix, and were counted along with the originals. "We now have a situation in perhaps a dozen precincts where we have significant numbers of votes that are going to counted twice," Trimble told reporters. Trimble wants the Canvassing Board to intervene, and not certify a winner until the duplicate ballot situation can be thoroughly investigated. The Franken campaign called it a false issue designed to stall the final outcome. "There is a systematic effort by the Coleman campaign to prevent all the votes from being counted for one reason and one reason alone," Franken attorney Marc Elias remarked, "Which is that they know they are behind and if all the votes are counted they will lose this election."
Supreme Court opens door to rejected absenteesLate Thursday afternoon the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on the Coleman campaign's attempt to keep local election officials from counting erroneously rejected absentee ballots. In a ruling penned by Justices Lorie Gildea, Christopher Dietzen and Helen Meyer the high court cleared the way for some of those wrongfully rejected ballots to be added back into the mix, but those ballots agreed upon by both candidate's campaigns and the local election judges. The Secretary of State's office estimates as many as 1,500 of the 12,000 rejected absentee ballots were disqualified without good reason. As of now none of those ballots, which are in individual envelopes, have been opened so there's no way of predicting which campaign would benefit most if they're resurrected. Justice Alan Page dissented with the ruling, asserting that campaigns should not be allowed to control that process of picking which absentee voters were wrongfully disenfranchised. "It is a perverse result indeed," Page wrote, "For political parties and their candidates to decide whether a voter's absentee ballot was properly or improperly rejected." Justice Paul Anderson also dissented from the majority ruling, saying that Justices Helen Meyer, Lorie Gildea and Christopher Dietzen had construed the meaning of Minnesota election laws too narrowly. The majority ruled that local election boards around the state lack the power to act on their own, when it comes to sorting rejected absentee ballots and counting those found to be improperly rejected. Although state law allows local election boards to correct "obvious errors" in counting ballots, the majority ruled that language only applies to errors in tabulating the votes and recording them on tally sheets. The Franken campaign argued, on the other hand, that rejecting an absentee ballot by mistake is the type of "obvious error" boards are empowered to fix, based on other parts of the election laws and prior Supreme Court rulings. Chief Justice Paul Magnuson and Associate Justice Barry Anderson didn't take part in the hearing or the ruling, because they sit on the Canvassing Board themselves and in that capacity may wind up receiving new vote totals based on those absentee ballots.
(Copyright 2008 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
