Recount wrinkle surfaces in Minnesota: missing ballots

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Star Tribune

A new wrinkle is surfacing today in the recount battle in Minnesota between incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken -- missing ballots.

The Franken campaign today said that it has learned of missing ballots totaling several hundred in various counties. Franken recount attorney Marc Elias said he's also bothered that counties that know they have missing ballots aren't bothering to look for them.

Elias declined to identify those counties but acknowledged that the Franken campaign is monitoring reports of several dozen missing ballots in Becker County.

Officials can determine they have missing ballots whenever they come up with fewer paper ballots than what the electronic Election Night vote total was for the U.S. Senate race.

Read more: 3aDhUec7PaP3E77K_0c: 3aDhUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU" target="_blank">http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/350...

[BlueJazz]

1. Anybody want to bet me that the Majority are not Democratic Ballots?

[damntexdem]

2. Not necessarily missing ballots:

could be fudged electronic vote totals.

[boobooday]

4. This is probably closest to the truth n/t

[Myrina]

6. ding ding ding

We have a winner!

[machI]

8. Or it could be some extra Republican ballots slipped in election night, now removed

Who ever it was manning the voting machine on election day ran a few extra ballots through for the Republicans and then destroyed them. Now that it is time for a recount, those extra ballots are not in the sequestered stack. They never would have been noticed if there was no recount.

[Demeter]

13. That Wouldn't Work In Michigan

Every ballot has a corresponding application to vote, and there must be one-to-one correlation.

[Delphinus]

33. I like that.

I've worked the polls before, here in Indiana, and we've used the electronic kind for a very long time. One thing we had to do was match the number of people who came into vote: we had to have as many signatures on the pollbook as there were votes on the machines.

[cosmicone]

16. If that were true,

Franken would be ahead.

Mathematically, what is more logical is that they removed democratic ballots before the recount so Coleman would win.

[sce56]

24. Yes but don't they also require a signature on the precint roster to show who voted!

That is what they do out here and it was optically scanned paper ballots!

[Thor_MN]

25. Yes, you sign the book when you get your receipt for a ballot.

At least that's the way it worked in my precinct. You go to the little old lady under the sign conationing your last intial, tell her your name, almost get your hand slapped when you point to your name because she isn't seeing it, sign, get a receipt, go to the next table, get a ballot, go to a carrel, fill it out, feed it into the machine to become the first person to vote in my precinct. I was second in line, but the guy in front of me was a first time voter, so it took him longer to get done.

Bottom line, they need to compare the number of signatures in registers with the scanner ballot totals with the recount totals.

[glinda]

31. We did not have to sign at our Township at all so

that is why this time we absentee voted. I didn't trust them. Just a really weird feeling.

[fascisthunter]

10. bingo!

[HopeHoops]

3. Space aliens. That's the only way to explain it - well, unless there were Republicans around.

[santamargarita]

5. Look under Coleman's bed

You can bet there is GOP criminal activity going on here!

[bobshin]

7. Serves Franken right- he ignored the problem and he's now stuck with it.

Electronic votes are UNVERIFIABLE- all of them, no matter what the records say, they are tainted- and if they're not there's no way to prove it. This recount effort is just as useless as Florida 2000.

Time for a reactionary, new and improved HAVA 2.0:
whoever hires the best hackers wins!

[scarletwoman]

9. Um, they are PAPER BALLOTS, not "electronic votes".

They are run through a scanner solely to count them. That's why they can all be manually recounted. It's not useless at all.

[nebenaube]

30. actually, those too have been shown to be flawed!

We have them in WI but I like the idea of signing the role when voting.

[tavalon]

14. While it is ironic that Franken is in the middle of a battle

that he had no interest in before, this isn't that situation. This state uses paper ballots and does a full recount. Not like Florida at all.

[Thor_MN]

26. WTF is wrong with all the people who feel that Franken should lose?

And why is it that NONE of them seem to understand that Minnesota use PAPER freaking ballots? We use optical scanners in most precincts to count them, but they don't even bother with that in smaller, rural precincts. There, they hand count.

Every election, a random sampling is recounted and compared to determine error rates in the scanners. Any race that is closer than one half of one percent (about ten times more than proven the error rate) triggers an automatic, full state, manual recount.

Minnesota has one of the, if not the, best voting systems in the nation.

All the people saying "Franken deserves this" should spend a few seconds to figure out they don't have a clue as to what they are talking about and then STFU.

[scarletwoman]

27. Thanks for trying to inject some reason and facts into this thread. This Minnesotan appreciates it.

Unfortunately, it's become quite obvious to me that the most vehement posters are the ones with the fewest empirical facts. It's really gotten annoying -- there are far too many people here who prefer their conspiracy theories to plain, ordinary, mundane reality.

Btw, your subject line doesn't seem to jibe with your last sentence. Did you mean to say "shouldn't" instead of "should"?

sw

[Thor_MN]

28. At this point I'm not sure

My brother-in-law died this morning and it's been a slow motion, disconnected day.

What I meant was that I wish that the Franken naysayers would take the time to realize they are clueless and then not spout the vengeful "Karma" remarks.

[scarletwoman]

29. My sincere condolences -- I'm so sorry, a death in the family is a hugely difficult thing.

I get what you meant now, thanks for clarifying it.

Best wishes,
sw

[rcsl1998]

11. Can They Go To Court To Check The Source Codes Of The Tabulators NOW?

It's not who votes that counts, but rather who counts the votes (basically a quote from Stalin)

[Dappleganger]

12. Why is it that republicans are always afraid of counting people's votes??

[tavalon]

15. Good framing!

Well done. I swear, we need a George Lakoff/DU framing award around here.

[ogsball]

17. They should also have a record of

who voted. That is when you vote you sign in. So there are three numbers that should be the same.

Number of voted Ballots on Hand = Number of ballots read into the voting machine = Number of people who signed in to vote.

When I work the polls we really work hard to keep these three numbers the same.

I guess what they are saying is that some of the paper ballots weren't turned over for the recount. These ballots are stored in boxes that are all taken back to the county after the election. Some of the boxes must be missing. If they are only talking about a couple of hundred that might be one poll that someone shoved under the table or in a closet. In normal times not a big deal when you might win by 27 votes a very big deal!

[marshall]

18. Everyone up there needs to check their trunks

I've never worked on an election so I don't know the procedures, but missing ballots have a habit of turning up there.

[desktop]

19. Just a little home cookin goin on

[haydukelives]

20. good thing

Fraken was out in front talking about election fraud.

oh yea, never mind.

[harmonicon]

21. oh, yes

Someone who doesn't campaign against rape deserves to be raped, huh?

[BlueJac]

22. Just count all the fucking ballots!

It is that easy. Every other country has it figured out except this fucked up country!!!

[glinda]

32. I say we revote! Bwhhhaaahhhhhaaaaa!

[bonito]

23. Oh, what the hell K&R n/t