Coleman vs. Franken ?????

[kjrice]

I guess Barney Frank will have a new pal.

[K.Bullock]

As a long time resident of Minnesota I would like to apologize for what we are inflicting on the country. In the whole state the best we could come up with is some clown who hasn't lived here for 38 years. We get our political representatives from the WWF and Saturday Night Live. That's the best we can do. We are hoping to get Randy Moss back so he can represent us in the house next election.

Apology accepted. If in the future it seems that you will have a shortage of acceptable candidates for political office, just call. Ohio seems to be teeming with Democrats these days, I am sure we can spare a few.

[Henry V]

Per the Wall Street Journal:

>>If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.<<

The story that leads the writer to this conclusion is at

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html

In short, the Sec of State is acting in a partisan fashion and it goes downhill from there. The Canvassing Board will do whatever it can to put votes in Franken's column. They ruled one way in the case of a county's mishandling of ballots and gave votes to Franken. Then they turned around and in a identical situation, elected to not honor the mishandling of votes and gave the votes to Franken. In both cases, more total votes than registered voters.

Eric

For a bit of balance based on the real facts, you may want to check out this article at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/...heir-fact.html

[Buzz]

For a bit of balance based on the real facts, you may want to check out this article at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/...heir-fact.html

Come on Henry! You know it's conservatives that argue with facts, whereas it's those Librols that argue on emotion.

[YardleyLabs]

Note that the cited WSJ article is not a news story but an unsigned opinion piece. It ignores many inconvenient facts such as the exclusion of several hundred absentee ballots by the Coleman campaign that precincts had determined were excluded inappropriately. It also ignores the facts concerning the "additional" absentee ballots that Coleman wanted to have counted that, as far as anyone could determine were identified based on the party registration of the individuals casting the ballots and with complete disregard for the rules. The Coleman campaign has the legal right to continue the contest in court. It's unhappy with that option since it actually requires the presentation of evidence. In the 2000 election, Gore made the choice to halt his legal challenges to the election in the interests of harmony. Personally, I felt he should have continued to fight even if that delayed the inauguration and that the decision of the court to halt the election when it was undecided because of the electoral college schedule was an abortion of democracy and law. Better to get it right. I feel the same with Coleman. He should continue to fight as long as he is willing to present facts. When all that is left are his complaints that he lost, it's time to shut up and go home. Due process is defined by how decisions are made not what decisions are made.

[Eric Johnson]

I was merely presenting one side of the issue.

What is the nature of www.fivethirtyeight.com?

Jeff, as I recall, Bush V. Gore found that there was insignificant time left prior to the Electoral College, a milestone that the Florida statute said that had to be accomodated.... the theoretical "safe haven." Gore missed one of the milestones (contest or challenge...not sure which) in Florida. Whereas, he could have taken action sooner, he elected to wait and the 2 weeks (?) spent waiting was the time needed to complete a full recount. Gore argued that they should only recount certain counties. The Supremes said, "No. They all should be re-counted or stop counting." They then remanded the case to the Florida Supremes.

I've had several strokes since that time so my memory is iffy. However, I ran the Legal Forum on Compuserve at the time and we had rather lengthy and clinical discussions on the whole affair. Shall I get you the decision?

Eric

[dcr]

I thought the purpose of the re-count was to confirm the votes actually cast....the canvassing board approved 133 votes in minneapolis that they can't find.... huh....
that DOES Assume no mistakes were made.....

But in the Maplewood MN district....they found ballots in voting machines days after everything was the election was over--- And I believe there was a district in Northern MN where the Judges went home the night of the election without counting the ballots.
So on one hand WE are supposed to believe election judges don't make mistakes & on the other believe that even if there a minor glitch it's no big deal????

[Henry V]

I was merely presenting one side of the issue.

What is the nature of www.fivethirtyeight.com?

Eric

Eric, thanks for linking the WSJ article. I was just presenting a counterpoint. I suspect there are other counterpoints out there too.

From what I could tell that website is done by some guy who is really into polling and political data. He has a FAQ page. In this case he seems to take a look at the supposed facts from the WSJ and directly takes most of them apart. If he is wrong let's see the data. WSJ never provided any specifics.

The Star Tribune which endorsed Coleman had a good editorial today commending the recount and also today, Coleman commended the recounting efforts and the process used so far but noted the double counting and the remaining rejected absentee ballot situation which was out of the hands of the canvassing board.

The next step in the process is court but as the fivethirtyeight site post today suggests, it will be awfully hard for Coleman to make up the current difference since, if some double counting occurred, it occurred for both candidates and since the rejected absentee ballots have already been reviewed and rejected by local election officials at least twice it would be unlikely that the courts would accept them and even if they did, Franken has pulled ahead because of absentee ballots that had been rejected in error.
Another few weeks and this should all be done.

[Eric Johnson]

How much was the outcome influenced by the election being a 3-way race? IOW, if it had been only a 2-way election, would the 3rd parties candidate's votes been split just as evenly or would they have gone largely one way or the other.

Eric

[Henry V]

For the latest on this soap opera see:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/...7PQLanchO7DiUr