Al Franken was defeated. The morons in Minnesota actually voted for the clown. If you want to vote for a clown, write in Bozo next time. In case you don't get it, Franken is a big fat idiot.
The lesson is that there's winning, and then there's winning and then trying to urinate in the loser's Gatorade on national tv while reading Mein Kampf and hoping to get away with it. Al Franken was clearly a bridge too far.
Well, unlike most of the hollywood elite, at least he ran for office instead of trying to manipulate the system/process through money and abuse of the airwaves and propaganda in film/tv. Doesn't change the fact he's a big fat fucking idiot.
Al will most likely lose, but most states have an automatic recount if the vote is really tight, and my guess is that less than 600 votes statewide will trigger a recount.
It seems like many of these um..."progressive" candidates running for the Senate and the House thought that they could ride Obama's coattails to a close victory, and now they have egg on their collective faces.
There's a mandatory recount. The difference is hundreds of votes. As we saw last time in Washington, recounts can change outcomes. Ed O.
Is Minnesota one of the states where if you don't get a majority there is a run-off? If so, that would take the independant out of the race and mix things up. But I have no idea. Google time I guess.
Although that would have been hard to predict a priori, given that MN voted in Jesse Ventura as governor. barfo
True. Once you decide this seems like a wise governor candidate it's kind of hard to know when to stop.
Update Franken's deficit: 239 votes By PATRICIA LOPEZ, Star Tribune November 7, 2008 Just as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie was explaining to reporters the recount process in one of the narrowest elections in Minnesota history, an aide rushed in with news: Pine County's Partridge Township had revised its vote total upward -- another 100 votes for Democratic candidate Al Franken, putting him within .011 percentage points of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. The reason for the change? Exhausted county officials had accidentally entered 24 for Franken instead of 124 when the county's final votes were tallied at 5:25 Wednesday morning. "That's why we have recounts," Ritchie said, surveying the e-mail sent in from the county auditor. "Human error. People make mistakes." The margin in the tightest Senate race in the country bounced like the stock market throughout the day, with the difference between Coleman and Franken dropping, then rising briefly to 590 votes before shooting down to a razor-thin 239 as of 11:30 a.m. Friday. In a reversal of the previous day, when Coleman had declared victory and suggested that Franken should waive a recount, Coleman kept to himself on Thursday, while Franken called reporters to talk about the prospects for a continued narrowing of the count. "Coleman said there was no reason for a recount, that there would be no movement," Franken said Thursday, a day after unofficial results initially showed Coleman with a 725-vote advantage. "But you see that it's more than halved and the recount hasn't even started. This election will be decided by the voters, not by the candidates." Brian Sullivan, a Republican National Committee member, said that "Norm is in the best position because he's still got the most votes, but if he was nervous on Tuesday, he's really got reason to be nervous today." Sullivan said that in talking to party officials around the state, new voters are becoming a point of concern. First-time voters may have marked ballots in a way that optical scanners could not read, Sullivan said, but that could be caught by a hand tally. "We're not talking about improper activity," Sullivan said, "just ballots where votes may not have been recorded if they weren't properly marked." Ritchie said that as part of its normal election procedure, the state has started a post-election audit in select precincts around the state that will go into next week. The audit process, which began with the 2006 election and is separate from recounts, takes a small sample of precincts in each county and reviews ballots as a test of vote counts and the optical-scan voting machines. Ritchie said he does not expect fraud to be a factor in the Minnesota race because of 2006 revisions that employ the optical scanners and the post-election audits. "We have a sound system," he said. Recount system The recount system is primitive but thorough, requiring officials in each county to gather paper ballots, visually determine each voter's choice and begin sorting. Observers from both campaigns can challenge ballots, which would then go into a separate pile. In those cases, the state canvassing board, made up of two state Supreme Court justices, two district court judges and the secretary of state, would make the final call. But even then, candidates can dispute the results of the recount and take the matter to court. "If this does not go down that road, I would be surprised," said Joe Mansky, Ramsey County elections manager and an election expert. "Frankly, they [candidates] should go to court as rapidly as possible so they'll have the protection of the rules of civil procedure." Minnesota's last two really close congressional races both wound up in court: the Arlan Stangeland-Collin Peterson race in 1986 and the David Minge-Mark Kennedy race in 2000. Mansky said that on average, about two of every 1,000 ballots are not counted by the scanners for various reasons, which could add 6,000 ballots in the Senate race -- more than enough to provide a decisive result. Typically, it's older voters and newer Americans who tend to fill out ballots incorrectly, Mansky said. Older voters are newer to precisely filling in ovals, he said, while immigrants "might have come from a non-democratic country and filling in any ballot is new to them." Take Action Minnesota, a coalition of labor and other groups, said Thursday that it was monitoring election complaints and had received calls about Somali voters in Minneapolis who were steered toward one candidate or another by interpreters. Those reports have not been proven, spokesman Dan McGrath said at a news conference Thursday, and they came in for both Coleman and Franken. Other complaints surfaced, he said, but did not appear systemic. Eyes on the recount Weary from a protracted campaign battle, field organizations now must convert campaign volunteers into recount monitors, willing to show up at every county in the state to watch over the laborious process of hand-counting 2.9 million votes. "We've just started that process," said spokeswoman Jess McIntosh as volunteers milled around the Franken campaign office in St. Paul. Ritchie said that shifting numbers in the Senate race were nothing unusual. "This happens in every election," he said. "Mostly it doesn't get very much publicity because it's just part of the standard process. That's why these are unofficial results." After the polls closed and 100 percent of the ballots were counted, Ritchie said, county auditors began the process of checking and rechecking their work, sometimes catching transposed or incorrect numbers in advance of submitting official tallies to the county canvassing boards. Those results must be certified as official by Nov. 18, he said, so county auditors are "really furiously working right now to make sure everything's completely accurate." Staff writers Curt Brown and Kevin Duchschere contributed to this report.
Democrats trying to steal a close election - again! http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/34024274.html Tension escalates as recount fluctuates By MARK BRUNSWICK, Star Tribune November 7, 2008 A tiny town in the Democratic stronghold of Minnesota's Iron Range emerged Friday as the latest battleground over the state's disputed U.S. Senate race. Democrat Al Franken gained 100 votes there between election night and when results were officially tallied on Thursday. Adding to the intrigue -- and suspicion in Sen. Norm Coleman's camp: The time stamp on the official tape printed out by a ballot machine in the precinct in question carried a date of Nov. 2, two days before the election. Election officials in Mountain Iron, Minn., and St. Louis County said Friday they are confident the final vote totals were correct. They chalked up the time-stamp discrepancy to a voting machine whose clock may have been improperly set or been running low on batteries. In the midst of the unresolved election -- the tightest U.S. Senate race in Minnesota history, with a recount in the offing -- the Mountain Iron confusion is the latest wrinkle. The difference between Coleman and Franken, which stood at 725 votes in Coleman's favor Wednesday morning, has changed several times since then as county officials have checked results, and was 221 by Friday evening. An election night worksheet from St. Louis County showed Franken with 406 votes from Precinct 1 in Mountain Iron. The revised totals Thursday night showed him with 506. Similarly, the vote total for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama increased from 469 to 569 when the final tallies were completed. Both Democrats won the precinct by a ratio of more than 2-to-1. "Obviously, this is highly suspicious. They found 100 votes, and it's statistically impossible that all 100 votes went to the two Democrats, even in St. Louis County," said Cullen Sheehan, Coleman's campaign manager. The Coleman campaign, questioning "improbable and statistically dubious chunks of votes [that] appear and disappear," sent letters Friday afternoon asking for records on ballot security and on any revisions of election night vote totals to the Minnesota Secretary of State's office and to each of the state's county auditors. Ritchie, campaigns meet Also on Friday, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie met with representatives of both campaigns to discuss the recount. Jess McIntosh, press secretary for the Franken campaign, said the private meeting "was constructive and courteous." Afterward, Ritchie held a press briefing at which he said that details of the recount will be made available on Wednesday, that the State Canvassing Board will approve a recount plan on Nov. 18 and that the recount must be complete by Dec. 5. The board, which certifies election results, will meet Dec. 16 and is expected to finish its work by Dec. 19. At the briefing, Ritchie responded to the Coleman campaign's complaints, saying the use of words like "dubious" and "extraordinary" appeared to be a deliberate political strategy "to create a cloud" over the results of the election. "'Dubious' would imply that county election officials are breaking the law and are dishonest people," Ritchie said. "That's not a statement that I believe this person could support with any facts, and it's the opposite of my experience." In response to Ritchie's remarks, Sheehan said it's the campaign's right to ask questions about the vote count process and have them answered. "I don't think it's raising a cloud over the process," he said. Tale of the tape Officials say the Mountain Iron voting discrepancies may have occurred on election night, when city election officials called in the results to the St. Louis County seat in Duluth. Because St. Louis County covers more than 7,000 square miles and some precincts are three hours away from the county seat, the county allows local election officials to call in unofficial results ahead of official tallies. "They called in and gave the number," said Paul Tynjala, the county's elections director. "Either we heard it wrong or the person on the other line read it wrong. When we get the official numbers, which are the tapes, we check them and double-check them. That's how we caught the mistake. We caught it right away." The tapes sent to Duluth, copies of which were examined by the Star Tribune, reflect the increased vote totals for Franken and Obama, but they also bear a time stamp of 7:55 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 2, two days before the election. Copies of election night tapes from the city's second precinct also show a discrepancy in the time stamp, indicating the votes were tallied at 12:14 p.m. on Oct. 31, four days before the election. Jill Anderson, Mountain Iron's deputy registrar, said election officials tested the machines before the election, successfully running sample ballots through for accuracy. But she acknowledged that no one checked the clock during the test. Election officials did see that the time stamp was off during Election Day but could not adjust the machine during public voting. "I haven't ever paid that much attention; normally, it's close to the time and date stamp, but it's never 100 percent accurate," Anderson said Friday. "I asked Paul [Tynjala] about that, 'Should I be concerned about this?' He said, "It's probably the only time you'll ever look at it.' To us, the accuracy is in the calculation of the ballots." Anderson provided the newspaper with copies of the tapes from what is known as the "public accuracy test," which also bear time stamps different from the Oct. 31 date on which Anderson said the tests were conducted. The voting machines, which are optical scanners, were bought by St. Louis County several years ago with federal funding through the Help America Vote Act, federal legislation that arose after questions were raised about balloting in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races. They are made by Election Systems and Software, an Omaha-based company. A spokesman for the company said Friday they were unaware of any similar problems with time stamps on the machines but said any inaccuracy in the time stamp mechanism would not affect the accuracy of the voting tabulations. Tynjala, the St. Louis County elections official, said there are mechanisms to reset the clock, but failing to do so may have been an oversight by local elections officials. He said a battery may be low on the machine when not plugged in or there may be confusion over the change from daylight saving time. Nevertheless, he said the issue does not affect the final results. "The camps can make of it what they want," he said. "I know in Mountain Iron it probably won't happen to them again," he said. In other developments: • Sheehan said that lawyers Fritz Knaak and Tony Trimble will be helping the Coleman campaign's recount effort, after former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger begged off because of a time conflict with his review for St. Paul of police tactics during the Republican National Convention. • Judge Barbara Neilson held a hearing on a Coleman campaign complaint filed last week alleging that Franken had violated election law by telling falsehoods about Coleman in two of his ads. Neilson, who previously tossed out one of the claims, said she will rule on the second dispute in a few days. Staff writers Pat Doyle, Kevin Duchschere and Glenn Howatt contributed to this report. Mark Brunswick • 651-222-1636 TIME DISCREPANCY PROMPTS QUESTIONS The ballot machine's printout at left shows the Mt. Iron Precinct 1 vote tallies from Election Day, but it displays a "Voting Results Report" time stamp of "11/02/2008," which is two days before Election Day. The report at right is from a test that election officials say they conducted on Oct. 31 to make sure the Pct 1 machine was counting ballots correctly; the time stamp is from four days prior to the date they said they conducted the test. Officials say these reports are proof that the machines have faulty clocks.
