In the Trenches: Notes from the Recount II

-I saw about 40% of the ballots in my county get looked at, and of those (about 10,000 ballots) there were about 10 ballots challenged. Only four or five of those were “legitimate” challenges which the State Canvassing Board really needed to bother with. I think “voter intent” can be accurately discerned in about half those non-frivolous ballot challenges. Also, there was one vote found which wasn’t counted by the machine, which wasn’t challenged and will thus be added to the vote totals. A single ballot out of ten thousand (in this instance, it was for Coleman).

-Extrapolating my experiences in Douglas County to the state counting process (which hasn’t been inaccurate thus far), 45% of the challenged ballots are legitimate question marks. One in 10,000 ballots will find a “new vote” not counted by the optical scanners (making for about 290 new votes) and those “New Votes” should favor Franken 2:1 which should net Franken about 100 votes. Coleman still wins. The challenged ballots might add 40-50 votes to either campaign depending on what standards are used (and if those standards are uniform, which I’m certain they will be). Coleman still wins again.

-My confidence in how Minnesota conducts its elections has been increased tremendously. One precinct which I was involved in had over 1500 ballots, not one was challenged, and the recount matched the machine count perfectly.

-About the challenged ballots…well, we were instructed by the “professional volunteers” who were shipped in by the Coleman campaign from out-of-state to challenge anything, even if it seemed frivolous. There’s a media battle between the two camps as to which campaign was being the most ridiculous in its challenges and based on this graph from TC Daily Liberal, both camps are equally at fault:

Both campaigns should be embarrassed for using their power to challenge ballots so frivolously.

-If something really weird happens, and there ends up being a tie in the election, something cool happens:

204C.34 TIE VOTES.
In case of a tie vote for nomination or election to an office, the canvassing board with the responsibility for declaring the results for that office shall determine the tie by lot.

-The Senate also maintains control over the seating of its members:

If the contested elections of the Minnesota, Alaska, and Georgia Senate races aren’t resolved before the new Congress convenes in January, the Senate has the power to seat someone to the position until the matter is resolved. It’s been done several times in Senate history, most recently as 1997 with Senator Mary Landrieu.

Article 1, Section 5 of the US Constitution states, “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of it’s own Members…”

How does it actually happen? The Senate Historian’s Office explains it this way:

“…a petition has been presented to the Senate or a resolution offered by a senator contesting the election of a candidate (in some cases a year or more after the election in question). The contest may relate to the actual conduct of the election (vote count, electoral irregularities, etc.) or electoral misconduct by candidate or supporters. Most, but not all, of these cases were referred to a committee for review.”

There has only been one case in Senate history when the chamber actually reversed the final election results. That was in 1926 in a race between Daniel Steck and Smith Brookhart in Iowa.

In 1974 the Senate requested a revote in New Hampshire in an election where the two candidates were within 2 votes of each other.

-I was incredibly happy with the elections officials and the Franken volunteers in my county. Everyone was friendly, everything was done openly and common sense ruled. There were still frivolous challenges but it wasn’t the circus I heard about in other counties.

-Looking at so many ballots was downright cool. I saw: a lot of Hillary Clinton presidential write-ins; a Jesse Ventura write-in for Senate; a Fred Thompson presidential write-in; a write-in for “Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt” for president, on the same ballot a write-in vote for Michele Bachmann for U.S. Senate; an absentee ballot where white-out was used to cover up a mistake (this ballot ended getting challenged by the Franken people); several ballots where the president and other top races were bypassed and left blank (the ones I saw all started at US Congress); dozens of ballots where only a vote was cast for president and the rest of the ballot was left blank (those favored Obama about 60-40).

-Split ballots were the norm (at least, a plurality).

-Other observations about the process will have to wait until after the recount is done. It’s fun to watch the PR battle (you know, being a recovering political hack) but I’m a bit disgusted by it (being a recovering political hack you know). But I don’t want to judge too early.

-Fearless prediction: Coleman wins with a 50 vote margin (to give myself some room for error: 50-100 vote margin).