Who here is grateful we have Mark Ritchie as SOS?

[trotsky]

Can you IMAGINE if Kiffmeyer was still calling the shots?

I have complete confidence in Mark - and no matter what the final result is of the Senate election, I will be able to accept it.

[qb]

1. I am! Bravo to Mark Ritchie for valuing accuracy over speediness.

I was also pleased to hear every ballot will be counted by hand. I hope the recount turns up enough errors in the ES&S vote-tallying machines to convince the legislature to require a transparent vote-counting system.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

2. And, how cool is it that we have same-day registration?

Seriously ... Minnesota's same-day election law is an incredible display of how Democracy should work. (Now we need to add early voting and really set the standard for the rest of the country).

[mzmolly]

3. Raises hand.

:hi:

[mascarax]

4. I am!

And perish the thought on Kiffmeyer. She probably would have commenced with the recount in the wee hours of the morning and declared Norman the winner (at noon today) by 52,987 votes (yep! she would've found more votes!).

I'm sorry to say that the one bad thing about going through by hand and counting ballots where people didn't fill in the circle correctly (instead circled the names or put an "X"), honestly...isn't that going to result in MORE votes for Norman?
Um, seems like the Republicans might be more apt to NOT follow directions.

6 more years of this <expletive deleted>. I hate it.

[trotsky]

5. Hard to say.

But hey, if Chiclet Teeth ends up with an even bigger margin of victory, so be it. I'd rather have a full, fair accounting of votes no matter what the result.

[dflprincess]

7. I can't remember where I heard this

but either on MPR or AM 950 it was being discussed that first time voters are most apt to make ballot marking mistakes. I would guess that the majority of first time voters are young ones and all the polls all showed that they were overwhelmingly supporting Franken.

[MNGremlin]

9. Agreed

According to the Strib, under-votes are predominantly in precincts which went for Obama. The election will be decided by the examination of ballots with under-votes and the interpretation of voter intent among spoiled absentee ballots.

I saw the difference between counting absentee ballots and same-day ballots on Tuesday night.

I was waiting for the unofficial tallies outside a precinct in Burnsville when the last voter of the night arrived at 7:55PM. Her daughter dropped her off at the curb and went to park their car. The woman tripped over the curb (she was using a cane) and fell hard face-down. Both her daughter and I ran over to help her up. Her daughter was distraught: "Mom, is it your blood sugar? What did you hurt? Should I take you home?" After a minute or two she was ready to get up and I helped her get her shoes back on (she'd literally been knocked out of them).

The woman was resolute: "I'm not telling you what hurts and I'm voting." She was limping pretty badly as I helped her into the polling location. She was shaking so much from the fall that she had a hard time staying inside the ovals when she filled out her ballot. The first two ballots she filled out were rejected by the scanner as over-votes, the third time was the charm and her ballot was accepted (this was about 8:15PM). She was all smiles as she limped out of the polling location after successfully voting.

If the woman in question had similar problems filling out an absentee ballot (without the scanner check for over-votes) she wouldn't have had a chance to correct her ballot.

[mascarax]

12. That makes sense

Sorry, had to take a shot at Repubs.

I really, really hope this goes Al's way.

[geardaddy]

6. Me!

Mark is the greatest.

Kiffmeyer isn't done yet though. :puke:

[MNReformer]

8. I communicate alot with Ritchie and helped him get elected

I also know Mark Halvorsen of the Citizens for Election Integrity of Minnesota. I can tell you this: Ritchie and our state legislators--especially Bill Hinty of Finlayson--have been "educated" by those of us who have been squawking about and studying the machines since 2004. I even campaigned for Ritchie. I have been in e-mail contact with both Ritchie and Halvorsen. My impression is that they are not as "alarmed" as they should be about machine rigging. They have tightened the audit laws and got the new recount law signed in May. But I know that Ritchie's main focus coming into office was with GOTV--he had a background in this in rural areas of the state. I think we have some pretty good laws re: chain of custody and prohibited communication from machines to tabulation centers but I still worry that Ritchie doesn't get it sometimes. I have sent him every thing I could get my hands on concerning rigging of ES&S and other optiscans that we use in our state. All I can say is, if he blows this, it's not because he wasn't warned. And Mark Halvorsen got involved during the 2004 "recount" in Ohio. I had him over to my house right afterward, because I had volunteered for that recount. He was very hot to trot on Holt's bill and went to D.C. to try to get Mark Dayton to contest the EV (while I and some others worked with his local aides). He used that exposure to start CEIM and establish himself in election reform. I didn't like his original focus, which was on getting Holt's bill passed. I was against any (further) Federal laws around our elections and told him we needed to work at the state level. After that discussion, he set up his organization and switched his focus to the state level. He worked with Ritchie and the legislature on the audit and recount laws. Now we shall see how well this process works and whether or not the machines cough up some kind of evidence of rigging. I have a lot invested in this recount and I am watching it like a hawk.

[Eric J in MN]

10. Can you please discuss this issue with Mark Ritchie?

Suppose a voter filled in the ovals for both Franken and Coleman, and put an "X" through the Coleman oval.

According to Minnesota law, that should count as a vote for Franken:

https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=204C.22

Subd. 11.Attempted erasures.

If the names of two candidates have been marked, and an attempt has been made to erase or obliterate one of the marks, a vote shall be counted for the remaining marked candidate.

However, on the local news, I saw an election official hold up a similar ballot, and say that no vote would count in that case.

Can you please ask Mark Ritchie to include an illustration similar to that in the materials he gives the election officials who do the recount, and explain that the vote should count for candidate whose filled oval wasn't crossed out?

[MNReformer]

11. Interesting. I'll send that on. Thanks! n/t

[Thegonagle]

13. That's a easily explainable technical question: if there are marks in both circles...

If there are marks in both circles, the machine (Diebold or ES&S) would kick the ballot back out as an over-vote.

An election judge will then help the voter determine why the machine did not accept the ballot, a new ballot will be issued to the voter, and the over-voted ballot will go into the "spoiled ballot" pile. (Spoiled ballots are retained for auditing purposes, to explain any discrepancy between the number of ballots issued and the number of people voting.)

On the other hand, if there's an "attempted erasure" in, say, Coleman's circle in the form of an "X" through the oval, and the voter then, perhaps, triple-circled Franken's name with 3 different colored markers, but didn't make a mark IN Franken's circle, the machine would record a vote for Coleman.

In close races such as this one, this is the reason automatic recounts are called for, and this is the reason recounts are done by hand--so that a human can determine the INTENT of the voter.

I am a firm believer in the solidity of Minnesota's process. We have a good system of checks, balances, and audits designed to catch human error, such as the error in that precinct where they keyed in 24 votes for Franken instead of 124. (And another plus in MN: we don't use the dreaded "provisional ballot" here--you either sign the roll and vote, register and vote, or you don't vote.)

That's why the machine counts aren't official until they've gone through the normal audit process and they are certified. Once all machine counts are balanced and certified, they can proceed with hand recounts in any races where the machine counts show a 1/2% margin or less.

Thing is, we voters (and the candidates) have to wait out the process.

[Eric J in MN]

14. But if it's an absentee ballot, then the voter wouldn't be given another ballot.

They would have to count the original ballot or not.

The law says that if the voter in one race filled two ovals and crossed out one oval, then count for the candidate with the oval which wasn't crossed out.

[Thegonagle]

15. I think in that case...

If the absentee can't be machine read (remember, absentees are opened and counted at the voter's individual precinct on election night), two or more judges will attempt to duplicate the ballot based on "voter intent" on a fresh ballot that CAN be machine read, and the voter's original absentee ballot will be spoiled.

I could be wrong, but I think I'm right. (Our laws are pretty protective of "voter intent" and making sure every possible vote counts.) I'll ask my contact in Ritchie's office when I see her tonight just to be sure.

[Eric J in MN]

16. OK, let us know. NT

NT

[Thegonagle]

17. Yes, in the event of a non-machine-readable absentee ballot,

two judges would make a determination of the voter's intent, and fill in a duplicate ballot for the machine tally.