Al Franken v. Norm Coleman: Recount Continues for Minnesota Senate Race

by Deb Cupples |   Minnesotans were torn about whether to send Republican Senator Norm Coleman back to Washington or to replace him with Democrat Al Franken.  For me, there's no choice between the Bush-style Republican and the hyper-intelligent Dem.  But I'm in Florida, so my opinion doesn't count.

According to Minneapolis's Star-Tribune, Coleman had 1,211,542 votes (41.99%) and Franken had 1,211,206 (41.98%) "as of 3:44 pm" yesterday.  Minnesota journalists sure are precise: 'shame that most national-level journalists aren't.

Today's difference of 336 votes has shrunk from 725 on Wednesday morning.

Sen. Coleman publicly asked Mr. Franken to waive his right to a recount -- you know, to foster the spirit of "coming together" and to spare taxpayers the extra expense of conducting a recount.

I suppose there's some logic to resisting the recount: Minnesota taxpayers already paid millions to hold the election -- why spend an extra $90,000 to find out if the results were accurate?

As a Floridian, I'm having fits of dejas vu. 

During Election 2000, another Democrat named Al found himself in a close enough race that a recount was automatic.  The Republican opponent similarly tried to shame the earlier Al into waiving his right to a recount. 

When that didn't work, Republican operatives took to the courts and ultimately had the recount stopped before the full results were in.  The earlier Al lost a presidential election by 537 Florida votes.

Memeorandum has commentary.

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Comments

[Ralph Kramden]

Deb - I think you're wrong on a couple of points about Florida 2000. Then again, if you're a Floridian, maybe I'm wrong. But I followed Florida 2000 situation closely (some would say obsessively). For the record, I was a Gore partisan.

- the recount in Florida was NOT automatic. (As a matter of fact, my close reading of the Florida recount law seemed to indicate that even if a recount was requested by one of the candidates, it didn't have to be granted.)

- Gore "went to the courts" first. He had to, in order to get a statewide recount ordered in the first place, which (as I recall) SecState Harris wasn't going to grant him.

Because of this, I like to characterize 2000 as "Bush stole it fair and square". I felt that any fair election would require a full and careful recount (thus the "stole it" part), but a full and careful recount was nowhere required by Florida law (thus the "fair and square" part).
-

[Hugh McBryde]

Eh? No subsequent recount by any entity, favoring Bush or Gore, official or unofficial had Gore winning.

From my point of view what happened was an election theft that was THWARTED.

[Hugh McBryde]

Eh? No subsequent recount by any entity, favoring Bush or Gore, official or unofficial had Gore winning.

From my point of view what happened was an election theft that was THWARTED.

[Deb Cupples (Buck Naked Politics)]

Ralph,

I must have mis-remembered the details. Thanks for straightening out my memory.

[Ralph Kramden]

Hugh, you are wrong.
The recount undertaken by the Miami Herald and USA Today (using the National Opinion Research Center) showed that Gore would have won if undervote ballots that showed the clear intent of the voter (but were not registered by the machines) were included in the count. (Ironically, this was the standard requested by Bush. If the ballots were counted with the standard requested by Gore - undervotes not counted, but overvotes where the duplicated votes both indicated the same candidate included - Bush came out ahead.)

See http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBallots.pdf for the details - WARNING: it's a 50+Mb pdf.

[Bill F.]

State laws indicate if a vote is valid or not. Undervotes are non-votes. Since this is a republic, you don't get to imply 'intent' from a screwed up ballot. Overvotes also do not count. By all recounts using the state's rules, Bush won that election. Stop whining and stop saying the 'supreme court decided the election'. The supreme court ruled, as it must, that state laws decide how to count ballots and validate elections. So the supreme court prevented our elections from being forever tainted by trying to gerrymander results when your candidate does not win. I found it most interesting that the same parties trying to count ballots that were invalid in Dade county were trying to prevent absentee ballots in the panhandle from being counted, because they likely would be in favor of Bush. The actions of the Democratic party in Florida in 2000 (and in Ohio in 2004) sickened me. And I am a registered Democrat. The only reason why Obama won was because enough of this country is so sick of what's been going on that they needed to vote in the other party. Trust me, after a couple years they'll be tossing a republican right back in there after the bills come due for this socialist nonsense. Maybe then we'll have REAL change. You guessed it, I would best be described as a "Reagan Democrat" or that oft maligned term, a 'centrist'. A centrist is 80% of this country and we are treated with complete disdain by the extremists in the other 20%. Personally I'm sick off all 20% of them. Both sides.
I consider Al Franken to be in the 20%, and not all that funny and a crappy radio host.

[Deb Cupples (Buck Naked Politics)]

HI bill,

I don't know how you can say " By all recounts using the state's rules, Bush won that election," because the recounts were STOPPED before they were finished.

They were stopped by the judiciary. In fact, we don't really know about the ballots that weren't counted because the recounts were stopped.

Incidentally, which particular Florida statutes are you referring to regarding the recounting of votes?

[Ralph Kramden]

Bill: "State laws indicate if a vote is valid or not. Undervotes are non-votes."

Bill, your very first two sentences are contradictory. Here is Minnesota state law concerning undervotes:

"Minnesota law requires that every effort be made to accurately count all votes on a ballot. This means that a ballot or vote must not be rejected for a technicality if it is possible to decide what the voter intended, even though the voter may have made a mistake or the ballot is damaged."

(Ref: http://www.sos.state.mn.us/docs/recount_guide_2008.pdf?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUs section 13.0)