Free Republic

Al Franken’s (D) campaign may ask the Democratic-led Senate to intervene on his behalf to allow some disqualified absentee ballots to be counted in his quest to unseat Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Franken attorney Marc Elias made the case to reporters Monday that as many as 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified and that the Senate or the courts may need to step in to resolve the issue. “No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted,” Elias said of the recount that became necessary when only about 200 votes separated...

The recount is around 88% complete with Coleman ahead in the official tally by 282 votes. At the same time, there are 5,623 ballots which have been challenged by one or the other campaign, and these ballots are removed - temporarily - from the official tally. Therefore the 282 vote lead is not very meaningful; what matters is the dispensation of the challenged ballots. For example, if these challenged ballots break 52.6% to 47.4% in favor of Franken, he wins. Note also that the vast majority of challenged ballots will go against the candidate making the challenge. That's because most...

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...

If the absentee names are made public, a mad scramble will ensue to contact those voters and get them to demand their ballots be counted. That's just what happened in the 2004 governor's race in Washington State after King County Judge Dean Lum allowed local Democrats access to the list of provisional voters that hadn't been counted because either there was no signature or no match between the signature and the voter registration on file with officials. Judge Lum's ruling was criticized by many election lawyers because, in the 2002 Help America Vote Act, Congress stipulated that provisional ballot votes...

New numbers are expected Monday for the razor thin race to extend BART to San Jose. An unexpected surge in "yes" votes Friday pushed Measure B within .06 percent of passing. It requires a 66. 67 percent "yes" vote to pass. The "yes" vote is at 66. 61 percent. Election workers have 17,000 provisional ballots left to count. The measure would fund part of the BART extension with a one-eighth of cent sales tax increase in Santa Clara County. BART officials on Monday will showcase new parking payment machines that are supposed to make parking easier at a news conference...

Although he doesn't have a seat, Al Franken will have the floor Tuesday when he meets with Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate. Franken, who is locked in a mandatory recount of the Nov. 4 balloting with Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman, will update Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and others on the recount process, said his spokeswoman, Colleen Murray. The Senate leaders and the candidate also will talk about upcoming legislation, she said. "If he should win this election, it would be irresponsible for him not to get ready to take office," she said. "Minnesota deserves a senator...

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...

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.

As the official recount for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat slowly approaches, political wonks from across the country are wondering why so many of the miscounted or misreported ballots that have narrowed Norm Coleman’s lead over Al Franken were from Northeastern Minnesota. The Coleman campaign has questioned an additional 100 votes awarded to Franken from a Mountain Iron precinct, and bloggers have been blustering about a 246-vote swing to Franken that came out of Two Harbors.Lake County Auditor Steve McMahon took a little flak from a FOX News reporter over that Wednesday, the same day the Wall Street Journal ran an...

IF Al Franken wins his Minnesota race, Democrats will get at least 58 US senators, giving them an effectively filibuster-proof majority. When Franken woke up on the day after the election, his GOP opponent, Sen. Norm Coleman, led by what seemed a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By that night, Coleman's lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday, it was 336. Friday, 239. By late Sunday, the difference had gone to just 221. When counties finally certified the results on Monday, Coleman's lead had been cut to 206. A pickup of 519 votes over 5 days - pretty impressive when you...

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.

Hold onto your seatbelts: The U.S. Senate race in Alaska may be headed for a photo finish between incumbent GOP Sen. (and convicted felon) Ted Stevens and his Democratic challenger, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. After a count of 28,000 absentee ballots, from all over the 49th state, Stevens' lead of 3,500 votes had been reduced to 971 votes. State officials expect to count 60,000 absentee votes. They will count an additional 35,000 provisional ballots and challenged ballots next week.

You'd think Democrats would be content with last week's electoral rout. But judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn't mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken. When Minnesotans woke up last Wednesday, Republican Senator Norm Coleman led Mr. Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, he was ahead by only 477. As of yesterday, Mr. Coleman's margin stood at 206. This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn't even begun. The vanishing Coleman vote came during a week in which...

Let's assume the 32 disputed ballots in Minneapolis were legitimate. Let's assume the newly discovered 100 votes in Pine County -- all for Al Franken -- were just overlooked by a sleepy official, and the 100 votes found in Mountain Iron -- again, all for Franken -- were valid. Let's suppose the trickle of votes moving inexorably in Franken's direction is just a function of a normal process, as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's office assures us. One fact remains troubling. The referee in Minnesota's hotly contested Senate race must act in a nonpartisan fashion, yet Ritchie came to office...

Mr. Sandvick's unit released a 67-page report on what it called an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of (the 2004) election in the state of Wisconsin" -- a swing state whose last two presidential races were decided by less than 12,000 votes. The report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once....

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.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- One Senate candidate says the voters have spoken. The other says the electorate still needs to be heard. In the end, experts say, it could be the courts or even the Senate that speaks the loudest on Minnesota's unsettled Senate race. While the race is headed for an automatic recount, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken have other options to alter the outcome. The recount is due to start once results are made official Nov. 18, and it could take weeks. Coleman clung to a 342-vote lead, out of nearly 2.9 million...

Judge has denied NAACP lawsuit asking that Virginia polls be kept open later than 7pm. GOP is also suing Virginia regarding military absentee ballots. Suit claims that ballots mailed out too late for military voters to return ballots by deadline.

After King County Elections officials uncovered what would later be described as the most egregious instance of voter-registration fraud in state history, John Jones was summoned to the office of then-King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng. It was early last year and Maleng's office was preparing to file charges against six canvassers who had filled out nearly 1,800 voter-registration cards the previous fall with names they made up using phone directories and books of baby names. Jones' organization, the state chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — commonly known as ACORN — had paid the workers $8...