Can someone please explain the 650 votes that Coleman wants counted

[pnwmom]

but Franken doesn't?

Does Coleman have any real case?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMpTmr96V5hKIfyHT4Av4jsVQgrQD95G1OIG0

Coleman's campaign has a pending request before the high court to include an additional 650 ballots that it said were improperly rejected but not forwarded by local officials to St. Paul for counting. The state Supreme Court has not said when it would rule in that case.

[NMDemDist2]

1. I'm not positive but from what I understand

there were 1600+ absentee ballots that were not counted on the local level due to rejection for one reason or another

the local boards (with Candidate officials watching) reviewed them and forwarded 950+ ballots to St. Paul for the State Elections board to certify and count, which they did today.

Coleman is trying to get the other 600 added.

I think.....

[opihimoimoi]

2. Its like taking a time out in the last quarter with 12 seconds..and ya losing by 16..look 4 miricles

[OregonBlue]

3. Actually I believe these are different ballots all together. Of the 1600 initially identified by the

precincts as having been improperly rejected, many were rejected by either Coleman or Franken campaigns. The rest (950) were agreed upon and counted today. Coleman has another (different) 600 that were properly rejected (according to the election rules of Minnesota) in districts where he did well. He now wants those included. So far no one (including his campaign) has come up with a good reason why those properly rejected ballots should now be counted, other than that they are in areas he did well and if they are not, he will lose.

[NMDemDist2]

4. ok, thanks

I was a bit fuzzy on that (obviously)

:hi:

[pnwmom]

7. Okay, good. Doesn't sound like he has much of a chance, then. n/t

[wellstone dem]

5. Sure can

The county election boards reviewed all of the absentee ballots. They sorted out 1300+ votes that were mistakenly excluded on election night. This means these votes were looked at once, and then were looked at again and an error not related to actions of the voted was identified. These 1300+ were the pool of ballots which the campaigns had to agree to have counted. They agreed to 953 of these ballots. The 953 were counted today. (Senator Franken had offered to agree to count all 1300+ votes, but Coleman would not agree to this. when that agreement was not reached, Franken's campaign did exclude some votes.)

Coleman's campaign went to precincts where they had done well and cherry picked another 650 ballots which they wanted included, in addition to the ballots identified by the election officials. these were ballots which had been previously reviewed by the election officials and were not identified as having been excluded in error. Coleman was supposed to provide a list of these ballots by 3 on Monday. He did not provide them until 3:06. Additionally, he did not explain why these particular ballots were wrongfully excluded by the election officials. (Franken had also identified about 40 ballots they asked to have included, but Franken submitted affidavits explaining why he wanted these included.)

So the 650 ballots are cherry picked without any reason stated as to why they should be included.

[pnwmom]

6. But where did these 650 ballots come from? I mean, which category were they in?

They couldn't have been part of the 1300+ wrongly rejected ballots, because all but 400 of those were among the 953 counted today.

So I guess they were among ballots determined to have been properly excluded?

[Hokie]

8. These were from the "properly exluded" piles 1 thru 4

There were 12,000 rejected ballots. Only 1350 were identifed as improperly rejected.

Coleman has two (or three) strikes against him on this. First, the counties already said these were properly rejected. Second. the wacky court ruling on Coleman's other lawsuit gives Franken and Coleman absolute veto power over counting any of these ballots. Franken's lawyers said they would count all of the 1350 identified by the counties as improperly rejected. Coleman said no I want to cherry pick among the 1350 AND throw in 600 from locations that I have a better chance of getting votes. Coleman knew he was toast after phase one of the recount and had to invent a reason to go to contest.

[pnwmom]

9. Thanks! I can't wait for this to be over. n/t