Today In The Minnesota Recount: Franken Doing Well With Challenged Ballots

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Today In The Minnesota Recount: Franken Doing Well With Challenged Ballots
By Eric Kleefeld - December 16, 2008, 4:15PM


We're watching today's big meeting of the Minnesota state canvassing board, so you don't have to. And guess what: All things considered, things seem to be going pretty well for Al Franken, though there some very important caveats.

At today's meeting they're reviewing challenged ballots, a process that is expected to last through to the end of the week. The board is looking over ballots that either of the two campaigns have had taken out of the count until now, arguing that it should be counted for themselves or not counted for the opponent for some reason.

Today's meeting is dealing entirely with ballots challenged by Franken, a mix of votes that Al's camp wants to have either prevented from being counted for Coleman, or to be put into his own total when they otherwise wouldn't have been. As such, Norm Coleman is going to pick up votes as most challenges are struck down, putting those ballots back in his column.

But Coleman's pick-up hasn't been that impressive, measured against the expectation that nearly all challenges would be overruled.

With 84 ballots reviewed so far out of over 400 total remaining Franken challenges, Coleman's net gain so far is at just 43 votes, and his pick-up rate has been pretty consistently around the 50% mark all day. When the board gets to Coleman challenges in the coming days, he'll need to keep Franken to a significantly lower pick-up rate than that, in light of the fact that Coleman has more total challenges.

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http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/today_in_the_minnesota_recount.php

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1. I'm still hoping that...

...it'll come to pass that Franken will win and Captain Phone Sex's head will explode when he has to say Senator Al Franken!

[creeksneakers2]

2. The ballots with withdrawn challenges are more significant now

About 4500 of the originally challenged ballots have now had their challenges withdrawn. So the votes will go to wherever the county boards originally said they should go. They could go for Coleman or Franken or neither. Nobody has counted those votes yet.

About 1400 challenged ballots remain. Since the challenger usually loses, and Coleman has about twice as many challenges as Franken, the remain challenges should benefit Franken. But the 1400 votes are outweighed by the 4500 or so withdrawn challenges.

There are still absentee ballots that may or may not be counted. Franken is also going back to challenge already recounted ballots.

Its very difficult to read anything into what happened today.