Free Republic

ST. PAUL - Hours after the Franken campaign failed to convince the Minnesota State Canvassing Board to intervene on its behalf, Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nev) supported Franken's attorney's statement that they are prepared to take the Minnesota election to the U.S. Senate for a decision. According to comments published by Talking Points Memo, Franken's lead recount attorney, Marc Elias, said: "There are a number of ways this can happen, whether it is at the county level, before the state canvassing board, before the courts of Minnesota, or before the United States Senate, we do not know," said Elias --...

The Coleman campaign has just issued the following press release that confirms the nightmare scenarios sketched out by John Fund in his Wall Street Journal column today: ST. PAUL - Hours after the Franken campaign failed to convince the Minnesota State Canvassing Board to intervene on its behalf, Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nev) supported Franken's attorney's statement that they are prepared to take the Minnesota election to the U.S. Senate for a decision. Later Wednesday afternoon, Reid opened the door for Senate intervention into the Minnesota election processing, saying: "Today's decision by the Minnesota Canvassing Board not to count certain...

A loyal family friend was appointed to Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s vacant Senate seat Monday as an apparent placeholder until Beau Biden can inherit it upon his return from active duty in Iraq. In one of her final acts in office, Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) selected Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser and former chief of staff to the elder Biden, to be the state’s next senator. Biden (D) won election as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate but was simultaneously reelected to the Senate on Nov. 4. As he cannot take both jobs, there has been intense speculation...

ATLANTA | Democrat Jim Martin is campaigning feverishly, aided by Barack Obama's grass-roots organization from the presidential race and a flood of support from the national party, but he remains an underdog against incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in a Georgia runoff election considered pivotal for the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Martin is behind in polls, has half the cash of his opponent and early-voting turnout among black voters is stagnating - a crucial block for any Democrat in this mostly conservative state where Republicans also hold the other U.S. Senate seat, the governor's office and...

A discrepancy over the number of ballots in a box and the number recorded on a computer tape from Election Day prompted a dispute this morning at the U.S. Senate recount underway in Ramsey County. The mandatory statewide recount began last week in the race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken. In Ramsey county, there were seven fewer ballots in the box from St. Paul's Ward 5, Precinct 8 than recorded on Nov. 4. Election judges counted the ballots three times before resealing the box amid protests from Franken's observers. County Elections Manager Joe Mansky said it's possible...

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) could be ripe for a challenge for his seat in 2010, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. Only 36 percent of voters in the survey said Martinez deserves a second term. More voters — 38 percent — say that he doesn’t, and 26 percent are not sure. When asked whom they would vote for if the election were held today, 40 percent said they would support the Democratic candidate and 36 percent said they would back Martinez.

Abstract: The runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia is providing a stark example of how candidates in the 2008 election have been able to skirt campaign-finance limits -- without actually breaking the law. Federal campaign-finance law limits individuals to donating $2,300 to a candidate per election. Yet Republicans and Democrats are soliciting donations more than 10 times that amount for the Dec. 2 runoff in Georgia. GOP fund-raisers are asking people to give as much as $65,500 toward incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss's campaign, while Democrats are seeking donations up to $30,800 for challenger Jim Martin. So how are...

After much speculation that his failed presidential bid would be his last campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has decided to run for re-election to his Senate seat in 2010.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens dropped further behind Democrat Mark Begich in his re-election bid Tuesday as the convicted felon's 85th birthday became a grueling wait that could determine whether his decades-long hold on power is over. The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed the Anchorage mayor by 2,374 votes out of 290,198 counted as election officials continued tallying absentee and other ballots. Begich had led by about 1,000 votes before Tuesday's count.

AK-Senate: Begich Widens Lead Democrat Mark Begich has nearly doubled his lead over Republican Sen. Ted Stevens with just 8,000 votes remaining to be counted in the Alaska Senate race, according to tabulations provided by the state's Division of Elections. With 16,000 of the 24,000 remaining ballots counted, according to the Anchorage Daily News, Begich now has 146,286 votes (47.56 percent) while Stevens has 143,912 votes (46.79 percent). Under Alaska law, a recount would be mandated only if the final margin is less than .5 percent ; Begich's lead is currently .77 percent. (Hat tip: Fellow numbers geek and Post...

The state Canvassing Board today directed that a recount begin tomorrow in the U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and DFLer Al Franken, even as the board considers a last-minute request from the Franken campaign to include rejected absentee and mailed ballots in the initial count. The board confirmed that, with all the state's 87 counties reporting, Coleman leads Franken by 215 votes out of more than 2.9 million votes cast. After county canvasses showed a margin of 206, Coleman gained an additional 25 votes, and Franken 16, from a post-election audit of voting machines in 205 randomly-selected...

The 2008 United States Senate race in Minnesota is one of the closest electoral contests in recent history: as of this writing, out of over 2.9 million ballots cast only 206 votes separate incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. The Minnesota Senate race is slated to be recounted starting on November 19, 2008, and a key issue in the recount will be the approximately 34 thousand residual votes associated with it. A Senate residual vote is, roughly speaking, the product of a ballot that lacks a recorded Senate vote, and in the Minnesota Senate race...

Franken Asks State to Count Disqualified Ballots @ 2:44 pm by Hill Staff Democrat Al Franken’s (Minn.) campaign filed a campaign with Minnesota’s Board of Canvassers Monday asking the organization in charge of certifying election results to include some originally disqualified provisional and absentee ballots in the vote totals. “There are, of course, legitimate reasons to reject absentee ballots,” said Franken spokesman Andy Barr in a conference call with reporters. “But it is clear that there are some absentee ballots that have been rejected in error. Those votes should be counted.” The Franken campaign said they expected their campaign and...

Georgia supporters of the fair tax turned out en masse Sunday to cheer the idea of a national sales tax, which has become a thorny issue in the state’s high-profile Dec. 2 U.S. Senate runoff. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won Georgia’s GOP presidential primary in February, joined about 2,000 people Sunday afternoon at the Gwinnett Civic Center in what became not just fair-tax rally, but a major campaign stop for Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Moultrie. Chambliss backs the fair tax, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax and most...

Democrat Mark Begich now leads Sen. Ted Stevens (R) by just over 1,000 votes with more than 90 percent of the total ballots counted in the high-profile Alaska Senate race. The Alaska Division of Elections counted another 14,500 votes on Friday and Begich's lead increased from 841 before the day started to 1,022 when the counting ended.

The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016. The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes. The state today is counting a total of about 60,000 absentee and questioned ballots. The Division of Elections said it expects to count roughly 35,000 additional absentee and questioned ballots over the next week.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who dipped into his own deep pockets to help finance his presidential bid, has directed $5,000 from his “Free and Strong America” political action committee to aid the recount effort of Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Mr. Coleman, the Republican incumbent, is locked in a tight race with his Democratic opponent Al Franken. Though the initial vote tally showed Mr. Coleman ahead by 725 votes, as counties double checked their figures over the last week that margin has thinned even more. As of Monday, just over 200 votes separated the two challengers. The vote totals...

The vote gap between Senate candidates Norm Coleman and Al Franken fluctuated throughout the day Thursday, with Franken closing to within 236 votes by Thursday evening.

It appears that Saxby Chambliss is going to have to have a runoff in Georgia for his Senate seat. Just heard John Kyl say that Obama is moving people and money into the state. Chambliss could be the difference in keeping the dems under 60 votes. If you can give $20-25 bucks to his campaign https://www.saxby.org/Contribute.aspx

Oregon return discussion thread.