No joke: Minnesota race is soooo ugly ...

[xochi]

Source: Politico.com

By JOSH KRAUSHAAR | 11/10/08 6:40 PM EST

The smashmouth Minnesota Senate race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken is showing no signs of letting up.

The bruising, too-close-to-call contest, which has now dragged on for nearly a week past Election Day, seems to get messier by the day. First, the Associated Press called the race for Coleman, before retracting its call under a cloud of confusion hours later. Then, amid accusations of ballot-tampering and partisan maneuvering by the Democratic secretary of state, Coleman’s lead gradually dwindled to a current 206 votes—and the official recount hasn’t even started yet.

The razor-thin margin between the two candidates guarantees that the race won’t be settled for at least another month, and legal battles surrounding the outcome could extend the dispute well into the 111th Congress. If the race doesn’t get resolved by the time the Senate convenes in January, the prospect exists that the Democratic-controlled Senate could vote on whether to seat Franken – a vote that, if held, would almost surely spark bitter partisan recriminations.

Even if Coleman prevails, the lengthy recount process could jeopardize his bid to become chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a position he has long sought.

“Minnesota nice will be the greatest casualty of this recount,” said Cook Political Report Senate analyst Jennifer Duffy. “It’s going to get ugly, it’s going to get expensive. It’s going to reflect what the race was.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15490.html

[onehandle]

1. Fuck Coleman. Give 'em Hell, Al! nt

[GregD]

2. I think it's great.

Give Franken a direct hit in the jaw of the realities of electronic voting. Win or lose, the silly guy will start hearing what people screamed at him about. He refused to listen. Now perhaps a light will come on for him, and one way or another he will use his voice to lobby for a solution.

[ogneopasno]

3. Minnesota vote on paper ballots, all of which will be counted by hand.

[GregD]

4. That's great. Because Brad reported before the election

that their POS ESS scanners couldn't count a stack of ballots the same twice in a row, and the fact that they will (hopefully) now all be counted by hand is a stroke in favor of democracy. I don't care who wins so long as they are counted correctly. But I want Al to get the freaking message that this (BBV) is a problem that needs to be dealt with, and this is a perfect way for him to get that message. Win or lose...

[MNReformer]

5. Either way, it's a pretty good test for Minnesota's process.

Which a lot of us have been heavily involved in here, including a concerted effort to educate the legislature and the SOS (as well as electing a Democratic SOS in 2006). A lot of questionable election results have gone unchallenged and uninvestigated in the past few years, starting with Coleman's "victory" over Mondale after Wellstone died.

[trotsky]

13. Absolutely.

I'm very much looking forward to this recount as an audit of our voting system. If Coleman does end up winning, it's a validation that the system works. If Franken wins, but just barely, we'll know that the system is pretty close. If Franken wins handily, there's some pretty serious problems.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Count every vote

Voter intent is the standard.

Not that complicated.

[yellowcanine]

14. Actually it can be fairly complicated when people do crazy shit on the ballot,.

Circle names, draw lines through names, make stray marks all over the place, write all over the ballot, etc.

[ColbertWatcher]

7. Does this have any bearing on Bachmann's race?

Also, check out this thread, too: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=7844656&mesg_id=7844656

[Morning Dew]

8. I can't wait 'til they hand count the ballots that were tabulated by Diebold machines.

THAT should be interesting.

[Thor_MN]

12. A survey of votes in 2004 (hand recount of some percentage of precincts)

showed an error rate of about 5 hundredths of one percent. I'm not sure that hand counting could be much more accurate, especially when you are talking about counting almost 3 million ballots. In this case, where you can set the ballots into separate piles because you are counting only one race, the hand count will be more accurate. In terms of counting the entire ballot, the scanners are accurate enough. Any difference less than half a percent triggers an automatic recount by state law, so we recheck any differences that come within ten times the error rate.

[camera obscura]

9. Minnesota politics got ugly when the Strib was bought up by a conservative group

thanks to the rantings of some Minnesotan Republican bloggers, the editorial board is now dominated by Republican-favoring carpetbaggers.

[Morning Dew]

10. I agree

The Pioneer Press is already a right wing rag. we don't need another.

It's bad enough the Strib prints Katherine Kersten's scribblings.

[B Calm]

11. Al Franken didn't think the cons had stolen the last election! I

wonder how he feels now?

[theboss]

15. I don't think the Dems in the Senate want Franken

Unless he is the difference between 59 and 60, my guess is that they would prefer Coleman.

[gratuitous]

16. This is a strange report

For all the sturm und drang about "nastiness" and "ugliness" and "bitter partisan recriminations," all the writer can come up with to show that on Franken's side is that Franken is raising money to fight the certification and recount battle. Every other instance of someone saying something ugly, of someone being nasty, of someone acting in a bitterly partisan manner comes directly out of the Coleman campaign or a Republican surrogate.

I am so sick of fake equivalency, this notion that because one side in a controversy is acting badly, both sides must be guilty of bad acting. Coleman wants to cast the progress of the polling in amber because he has a tiny lead, exactly the strategy pursued by the Bush team in 2000 and 2004. It's like a basketball team scoring a basket off the opening tip, and then asking that the game be stopped. Coleman isn't interested in a fair and full count of votes. He wants to stop counting after the precincts favorable to him are counted, and to hell with the voters in Minneapolis and anywhere else he doesn't enjoy overwhelming support.

The bad news for Coleman is that we've already seen this game played out twice. And the Franken team doesn't seem to be rising to the bait the way the Gore team did in 2000. There is also the fact that coverage (aside from this report) has been more even-handed, and the news narrative isn't dominated by Coleman camp talking points. Some reporters are actually reporting what's happening, and what the law is, rather than what Coleman would like to be happening or what Coleman would like the law to say.