Does Al Franken have any chance of winning the recount?

[BLUSH]

Has anyone ever won a recount in a Senate election?

He fell 500 votes short according to MSNBC.

[dennis4868]

1. Gore was about to win the Florida recount..

until Scalia and his buddies put a stop to it in 2000...

[BLUSH]

3. Is 500 votes a lot in the state of Minnesota?

?

[myrna minx]

17. No, we traditionally have huge voter turn out, so 500 votes is a drop in the bucket.

500 votes is merely 2 hours of voting at one precinct, so keep the faith. We could still win this.

[Clovis Sangrail]

2. if 500 is within the margin of error then there is at least a reasonable chance /nt

[onehandle]

4. Doubtful. And we won't know for a month. nt

[mzmolly]

5. I think it depends upon any provisional ballots etc.

It would be great if he did. :) But, I haven't a clue .....

[Frosty1]

41. We still don't know how many absentee ballots may be out there.

[grantcart]

80. MN doesn't have provisional ballots - they have election judges that

make final decisions on the spot - they have same day registration so anybody can vote if they walk in and convince the local election judge that they meet the residency requirement.

[truthisfreedom]

6. Between 2 and 3 million were cast. He has a fine chance.

[BLUSH]

8. So there have to be 500 "mistakes"

as in 500 that went to Franken were misread as going to Coleman?

[Zodiak]

11. No, it would only take 250 of those

Each of those votes takes one out of Coleman's column and puts them into Franken's.

[BLUSH]

22. My bad (math was not my best subject)

:)

[sandyd921]

44. Wouldn't say they have to be "mistakes"

Enough uncounted absentee ballots could get him over the top.

[Strelnikov_]

26. 2,859,883 to be exact. 500 represents 0.017% of the vote. The race is tied.

I will say, Barkley probably will not prevail.

[LisaL]

7. He certainly has a chance. Will it happen-who knows.

[scarletwoman]

9. As a Minnesotan, I seriously doubt it. Our elections just aren't particularly buggy.

Yes, the vote is close, but I'm pretty sure the recount will show that Franken simply got fewer votes than Coleman. He was an incredibly stupid choice to run against Coleman in the first place.

sw

[Zodiak]

14. I have to agree with you

I am just not a big fan of Franken, and I think he is about as inspirational a politician as a cheese sandwich.

He writes funny books though.

[pathansen]

40. He did very well considering there were 2 "VOTE FOR CHANGE" Candidates on the ballot against Coleman

Most Senate races only had 2 candidates so I feel Barkley ruined Franken's chances, just like Nader spoiled Al Gore's run for President.
I also felt Franken did well in spite of vicious GOP attacks against Franken's character and Coleman's many lies.

[Zodiak]

47. Barkley is an outside entity

You can blame him all you like, but it is something you cannot control. Third parties happen, and they are more likely to happen when a milquetoast is nominated by a major party.

Why was Barkley successful in getting votes?

Answer: cheese sandwich.

Obama didn't seem to have a Nader problem and the lies didn't hurt him so much, why?

He's not a cheese sandwich.

Franken was a crappy choice to run against Coleman. I'd vote for him, but then again, I vote strategically. Americans vote not strategically, but on personality, too, which is why it i essential that we do not have cheese sandwiches.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

21. Stupid enough to come within an inch of winning (maybe he even really did)?

:eyes:

I'm surprised at the amount of contempt some people have for the man. He's really a bright and funny guy who seems to know his stuff (if his books are any indications).

[Morning Dew]

23. there's a share of Franken dislikers around DU

I like the guy and hope he wins on the recount.

[scarletwoman]

29. I don't dislike Franken, I just think he was a stupid choice to run against Coleman.

He was never going to be someone around whom regular Minnesotans would rally. There was simply no way to pawn off a smart-mouthed New Yorker funded by Hollywood liberals as a working class hero.

sw

[Proud Liberal Dem]

30. Maybe, maybe not

I respect your opinion and I admit that I don't know much about whether his candidacy or somebody else's candidacy would've worked better in Minnesota this year but I should point out that he WAS born and raised in Minnesota and, personality and position-wise, he seemed to be an excellent "successor" to Wellstone's legacy.

Minnesota is also the state, I believe, that elected Jesse "The Body" Ventura as Governor so Franken is probably as good of a candidate for the state as the next person.

At any rate, my condolences to you and your fellow Minnesotans for having to put up with another 6 years of being represented by Coleman (who seens like a real jerk).

[scarletwoman]

35. Franken is no Wellstone. Wellstone was -- get this -- a COMMUNITY ORGANIZER.

Paul Wellstone lived in Minnesota for YEARS before he got into politics. Franken buzzed in a few years ago, announced his desire to run for Senate, then collected wads of cash from out of state to fund his run.

Just because Franken was born and raised in Minnesota doesn't make him a homeboy after he spent most of his adult life in New York.

I knew Paul Wellstone, Franken is no Paul Wellstone.

Yeah, it burns me up that we're stuck with Coleman for another six years, I can only wish we'd had a better candidate to run against him.

sw

[Proud Liberal Dem]

51. Well, it looks like you've made an excellent case for somebody other than Franken

I guess I can't really argue with you about the comparisons between Franken and Wellstone. I guess I just thought that it would've been cool to see Al in the Senate. OTOH since it (looks like) he won't be in the Senate maybe he will go back to writing and/or radio although, gosh, what will he write about now that Bush et. al will be gone?

[PVnRT]

33. Um...isn't Norm Coleman the former roadie from New York City?

[scarletwoman]

36. Yeah, but he was here for a long time -- 2 term mayor of St. Paul.

Smarmy asshole that he is, he DID work his way up in Minnesota politics.

[MattBaggins]

34. Smarted mouthed NYer?

You mean the New York Jew who was actually from MN?

As a smart mouthed NYer you can kiss my

[scarletwoman]

39. No, I mean the smart-mouthed "satirist" who hightailed it out of Minnesota as fast as his show biz

career could take him, and stayed away for decades until he got political ambitions.

You can kiss MINE.

sw

[jsmirman]

61. POSTER CLEARLY HAS AN AXE TO GRIND ^^^^^^^^^^^

this rural chauvinism is not particularly attractive on you.

[Occam Bandage]

64. No, scarletwoman is right. Franken was a bad candidate.

The DFL was not happy in the slightest about his candidacy.

[jsmirman]

68. He may not have been an ideal candidate. That still does not excuse

someone not hoping against all hope that he emerges the winner from the Minnesota election an adds another democrat to our Senate number. I find anything else repulsive here on DEMOCRATIC underground. And there is a nasty anti-urban tone to her postings that I find disgusting.

We here in NY accepted Hilary, who doesn't have a damn thing to do with our state - but as she's been a good DEMOCRATIC Senator, we're proud to have her represent us.

[Occam Bandage]

71. Oh, we all hope to see him win. That doesn't mean we have to pretend

that it's likely he'll win, nor does it mean we have to pretend he was a good candidate. As for the anti-urban tone, while I would perhaps have phrased it more gently, as a resident of Minneapolis I have to agree with the content of her posts. The nomination of Franken was not done with so much as a glance towards rural Minnesota; it was done entirely on the strength of his massive pre-campaign out-of-state fundraising and his young, urban fans. Had he not run, someone with broad support like Tim Walz could have run and won handily.

[scarletwoman]

84. Way to miss the point.

And for your information, I was born and raised in St. Paul, lived in Minneapolis for over 20 years, and I've also lived in Los Angeles, Marin County and San Francisco. I didn't go rural until I was 40 -- I have a pretty good experience of both worlds.

My concern is for what works politically for the broadest constituency in a state-wide election. The Franken candidacy simply fell short when it came to the Minnesota rural vote.

I've looked over the election results for dozens of precincts in my county, and it's pretty much the same story in all of them -- the Franken vote is consistently about 20% less than the Obama vote.

It's not "rural chauvinsim" to report what the data clearly shows.

sw

[bunkerbuster1]

42. I don't understand the contempt at all.

maybe it's partly residual anger over his initial support for the Iraq invasion, but it has to be mostly...something else.

I don't get it. I think his decision to run was courageous.

Oh, and I loved his AAR show. And still miss it.

[Occam Bandage]

69. That is because you are not a Minnesotan,

and as such are not subjected to and desperate to be rid of Norm Coleman, nor were you forced to deal with Al's horrible candidacy.

[Occam Bandage]

60. In a race he should have won by ten to fifteen points,

given Obama's performance against McCain, Amy Klobuchar's performance against Mark Kennedy, and R/D splits.

[Frosty1]

46. I disagree

Franken is the only one who could have come in and upset coleman. You see how far Tinklenberg got against bachmann. Franken did much better.

[Occam Bandage]

72. Actually, Tinklenberg did better than Franken did in the 6th district.

Plus, the 6th wasn't supposed to even be competitive this year, plus Tink was a pretty bad candidate in his own right. So, um, great point.

[Ganja Ninja]

10. He has a very good chance.

Ask your self this. What do you think the chances are that the GOP tried to disenfranchise some voters? Pretty good? :shrug:

I'm hearing they challenged a lot of voters in the Minneapolis area. Those voters voted on provisional ballots that aren't included in the count so far.

[LisaL]

13. Gov. Gregorie had less votes after the election in 2004, but

after the recount ended up ahead. So, yea, Franken got a chance.

[scarletwoman]

19. Where are you hearing this? Minnesota passed a law after the 2004 that any vote challenges must be

made in writing to an election judge, and challenges can only be made by someone who swears under oath that they have personal knowledge of the voter they are challenging.

I'd really like to know what your sources are for the claims you are making.

sw

[Ganja Ninja]

25. I heard them say it on Stephanie Miller this morning.

They didn't say much more than I've said about it.

[scarletwoman]

27. "them" who? (nt)

[Ganja Ninja]

28. Stephanie and crew.

Here's a link to a story about the GOP challenging voters.
http://mshale.com/article.cfm?articleID=18265

It doesn't go into much detail on the numbers but there must have been something going on.

[scarletwoman]

31. That's certainly not evidence that "they challenged a lot of voters in the Minneapolis area."

There's nothing in that article that states even ONE voter was challenged.

Look, I wanted Coleman out just as much as anyone, but pushing fantasies about voter disenfranchisement with no credible evidence is just plain stupid and unworthy.

There's very little chance that a recount is going change the final result, that's just the way it is. All the urban liberals who pushed Franken on the rest of us have only themselves to blame. As a rural Minnesotan, I knew he wasn't going to go over in outstate Minnesota.

sw

[musicblind]

32. Geesh. What crawled up your ass.

:wtf:

Al is awesome and if Minnesota is too dumb to realize that then ...

but we don't know if he even lost at this point.

[scarletwoman]

43. Well, excuse me if THIS Minnesotan does NOT think he's "awesome".

I really wanted that Senate seat back, and it pissed me off no end that we ended up with such a weak candidate as the Dem contender. He had no credibility with anyone besides die-hard partisans.

It ought to be obvious to everyone by now that Minnesotans vote split tickets; if a candidate has no natural constituency beyond party loyalists that candidate is not going to win, period.

sw

[Frosty1]

49. Horse feathers

Up here in Northern Minnesota we liked Al just fine.

[scarletwoman]

52. My little north woods precinct has 170 registered voters.

107 of them voted for Obama, 85 voted for Franken. Why did 22 of those Obama voters go for someone other than Franken in the Senate race?

sw

[Frosty1]

54. Maybe my precinct is smarter than yours?

:evilgrin:

[Occam Bandage]

67. And that's something the DFL can't control. We can, however, choose our candidates.

If we run candidates that have no appeal whatsoever to stupid districts, we are going to lose. I knew Franken was a weak choice from the day he moved here to run. So did most everyone else inside the DFL.

[musicblind]

56. Because your town is run by anecdotal evidence

and is full of people who make bad choices?

[scarletwoman]

82. "...run by anecdotal evidence"?? What the hell does THAT mean?

Bad choices? My township (not a "town", this is a totally rural area consisting of farms, isolated cabins, and part of an Indian reservation) gave 107 votes to Obama, compared to 35 for McCain -- not to mention 1 each vote for the Socialist Workers Party and the Green Party tickets. That's just over a 3 to 1 ratio of voters NOT voting Repug. I'm pretty proud of that.

But they only gave 85 votes to Franken -- there were 18 votes for Barkley and 38 votes for Coleman. So let's say that the Socialist and Green party voters went to Barkley, that theoretically leaves 16 Obama voters who went for Barkley, 3 that went for Coleman, and 3 who apparently didn't bother with the Senate race at all.

The senate campaign was utterly horrible. It has nothing to do with my township having voters with bad judgement. The bad judgement was on the part of the DFL for running Franken.

sw

[DFLforever]

38. Even if challenged

MN has same day voter registration. A challenged voter can reregister and vote on the spot so doesn't need to vote provisionally.

[Drunken Irishman]

12. A chance, but it's very, very, very unlikely.

Generally a recount, unless it's a few votes, doesn't change the outcome. If you're looking at 500, it's even more unlikely.

[LisaL]

15. Tell it to Gov. Gregorie.

[ps1074]

16. Tell that to Gov Rossi

:rofl:

[Drunken Irishman]

20. Like I said, it's very unlikely and rarely happens.

[jsmirman]

63. Have any more stupid, inaccurate polls to bother us with DI???

Congratulations on consistently being one of the worst posters throughout the last month of the election. You defined the term "concern troll."

[Lucian]

18. Of course he does.

[OmahaBlueDog]

24. Wouldn't we now also have to wait for military ballots?

[krawhitham]

37. provisional votes should put him over the top

[BLUSH]

50. Is there a consensus on that?

I have been watching MSNBC and haven't seen any talking heads making that case.

[scarletwoman]

53. What provisional votes? We have same day registration, provisional ballots are extremely rare.

It's a non-factor.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

45. 500 votes doesn't sound like much to me.

[SoCalDemocrat]

48. We need to help Franken - find the exit poll data

Find the data, analyze it, look for discrepancies, post everything you can find.

[BLUSH]

55. Coleman has asked him not to pursue it any further

Norm wants Al to stop the recount.

:puke: Coleman

[jsmirman]

70. And Coleman can go fuck himself.

nm

[twistedliberal]

85. Yeah, what a shithead.

State law requires a recount, yet that slimy thug is trying to make Franken look like a whiner.

All that fucker's done is pour bucket after bucket of slime on Al. The voting is over, and he still can't stop.

I. Hate. Repukes.

Just checked Minnesota Public Radio and they report a 337-vote difference right now.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/

[asksam]

86. Of course he wants to stop the recount...

... so that the evidence of Rethugs trying to steal the election won't be found.

[Versailles]

57. Found this this morning...

Relevant here. If this is investigated, Franken does have a chance.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7805629

[DemsUnited]

58. Minnesota has electronic voting machines with NO paper trail, so nothing really to recount.

Unfortunate, but unless some human error is found in the transmission of data from precinct to headquarters, it may be hard for Franken to find his votes. Not that they aren't there, but because of these godawful "black box" electronic voting machines, they just aren't visible.

For all their issues, butterfly ballots and hanging chads are better.

Paper ballots & scanning machines are best.

On Edit: Apologies to Minnesota. Thought y'all had touch screen voting machines and am THRILLED to learn Minnesotans vote using paper ballots & scanning machines which are definitely best of options currently available! Thanks to all who corrected me.

[myrna minx]

59. No we don't. We use PAPER ballots but have our ballots tabulated by optical scanner.

On edit--Our Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie is a really good guy, and has made Minnesota a clean election state. The recount, as mandated by law, will be a good audit to see if our optical scanning tabulators are functioning properly. One thing abut the scanners is if a person doesn't fill in the oval bubbles, and marks an "x" or a check mark, the scanner will not count those as a vote. There may be legitimate uncounted votes that may be found.

[DemsUnited]

73. Thanks for correction, GREAT to hear!

[myrna minx]

78. You're welcome. Minnesota usually has a large voter turnout and we pride ourselves

with our transparent, clean elections. :-)

[Occam Bandage]

65. "Paper ballots & scanning machines are best." Er, MN has those.

We've never had touchscreen machines. We consistently have the largest turnout in the nation, and we consistently have the fewest irregularities in the nation. We do elections right.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

66. Wrong. We use paper ballots and optical scanners.

The scanners are pretty accurate but not perfect. The paper ballots will now be hand counted.

[Occam Bandage]

62. No. He doesn't.

MN has same-day registration and very lax identification requirements; provisional ballots are not a factor here. We use optical scanners and standardized ballots; we've had this system in place for quite a while, and errors are few and far between. To hope for 500 ballots' worth of error all in one direction? Only a fool's hope.

Franken was an awful candidate, and one that most of the DFL disliked.

[Doremus]

75. That would be 250 ballots, not 500. n/t

[Occam Bandage]

76. No, 500.

If a machine did not read one ballot's vote for Franken (or if one absentee ballot went uncounted), that is one ballot's worth of error. That occurs far more frequently than a machine giving a vote to the wrong candidate. I cannot even imagine how the scanner would give a Franken vote to someone else--or why, even in such an unlikely scenario, Franken->Coleman would be any more likely than Franken->Barkley or Franken-> (any one of the 5 other third-party schlubs).

Since the combination of:

1. Failure to count a Franken bubble,
and
2. A Franken vote being awarded to a non-Coleman candidate

is far more likely than a Franken bubble being awarded to Coleman, I think it's more reasonable to say "500 ballots" and not "250 ballots."

[Occam Bandage]

74. Where is all the bad information in this thread coming from?

"MN has a bunch of provisional votes!"
No. It has same-day registration, lax identification requirements, and challenging is almost impossible.

"There were a ton of challenges!"
No. Challenges can only be made in writing, and the challenger must have actual proof that the challenged voter is ineligible in order to make a challenge.

"MN has touchscreen machines!"
No. MN has always had paper ballots.

Who is feeding people this information?

[myrna minx]

77. I know. I've done my best to correct the bad information, but it's been tough.

Mark Richie has done a great job as SOS. I think of this recount as a healthy audit of our optical scanning tabulation. We may find a few votes, due to people not following instructions, by marking their votes with an "x" or a check mark, but, all in all, I find our elections to be clean and fair.

Also re: challenges, in addition to making a challenge in writing, you must sign an oath, that you are being truthful.

[scarletwoman]

87. There are plenty of DUers who are in love with their theories & don't want to be confused by facts.

I've noticed this for years. It always cracks me up when DUers crow about their superiority to freepers -- when so many people here simply mirror the same kinds of behavior: "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts!"

sw

[budkin]

79. I wish but it doesn't look good. :-(

[BLUSH]

81. Coleman's lead just 337 votes in Minn. Senate race

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The narrow margin in Minnesota's unresolved Senate race has gotten even smaller.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over Democrat Al Franken stood at 337 votes Thursday afternoon. That's down from 438 votes Thursday morning and larger margins Wednesday.

With nearly 2.9 million ballots cast, the candidates are separated by about one hundredth of a percentage point.

The unofficial returns are being revised as election officials double-check their figures.

The final tally won't be certified until the state canvassing board meets Nov. 18, and an automatic recount awaits.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMpTmr96V5hKIfyHT4Av4jsVQgrQD949KS680

[MadBadger]

83. 336

[BLUSH]

88. Go, Al, Go!

http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/20081104/ElecRslts.asp?M=S&R=all&P=A&Races=