Number of challenged ballots growing in Minnesota Senate recount

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: CNN

As the Senate recount resumes this morning in Minnesota, the number of ballots being challenged is growing. Nearly two-thirds of the votes have been recounted in the battle for incumbent Republican Norm Coleman's U.S. Senate seat. The recount, which began last Wednesday, could extend into next month.

Unofficial results from the November 4 election put Coleman, a freshman senator, just a few hundred votes ahead of his Democratic challenger, Al Franken, known across the country from his days on Saturday Night Live and from his years as a talk show host on Air America, the progressive radio network. The slim margin for Coleman, far less than one half of 1 percent, triggered an automatic recount, the first time there's ever been a recount of a U.S. Senate race in Minnesota.

Now election officials are in the middle of the long process of recounting all of the ballots at 107 sites across Minnesota, surrounded by election observers and lawyers from both campaigns, and the media.

The Secretary of State's office reports nearly 2,000 ballots have been challenged so far, with 948 questioned by Coleman's camp and 945 by Franken's.

According to the Secretary of State's office, 65.65 percent of the more than 2.9 million votes cast in the election were recounted through the weekend. Coleman's vote today is down 669 votes and Franken's down 621 votes.

The process could extend well into December. The recount sites across Minnesota have a deadline of the first week of December to report their results. After that, the state's canvassing board meets to rule on disputed ballots and to certify the election. If one side is unhappy with the results, legal action could follow....

Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/24/number-of-challenged-ballots-growing-in-mn-senate-recount/#more-31207

[Fearless]

1. So how many is he off by now?

[AllentownJake]

2. Looks like Coleman's strategy is to

try to maintain a lead going into the decision phase so challenge everything. So that even if Al does pull it off he has a talking point to try to delegitimize the process for the Hannity's of the world.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[gratuitous]

4. Daily Kos had a shot of one of the challenged ballots

The Coleman campaign was challenging a ballot because even though the Franken bubble was completely filled in, there was a dot in the bubble for another candidate (not Coleman). The screen shot looked pretty clear to me that the voter's intention was to cast a ballot for Franken, but the ballot was being challenged nevertheless.

It's to be expected that the respective campaigns will challenge as many ballots for the other candidate as possible, but many of these challenged ballots, if they're anything like the one shown at Daily Kos, are not ambiguous.

[Eric J in MN]

5. Norm Coleman will probably be ahead after the canvassing board...

...reviews the Challenged Ballots (oval filled in for one candidate, dot in another oval, for example).

Then Al Franken will sue to have Rejected Absentee Ballots counted:
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http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/34853669.html

If the hand recount of ballots to determine a winner in the U.S. Senate race has Minnesotans edgy, pity poor Robert Marvin.

The Roseville man was too ill to risk a long wait in line on Election Day, so he dutifully filled out an absentee ballot, only to discover Thursday that his vote never got counted.

Now his wife, Ruby Marvin, is hopping mad.

"Oh for cripes' sake," she said when a Star Tribune reporter told her that election officials said her husband's ballot had been rejected because he wasn't properly registered.

"We've lived here for five years and voted in every election," she said.
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[DeepModem Mom]

6. Thanks for the link, and additional info, Eric J! nt

[4_Legs_Good]

7. I seriously doubt Coleman would raise any legal challenges if Franken wins

He's just not the litigious type.

:sarcasm:

David