Franken finds more ballots after losing... AGAIN

[JaJae]

Is anyone noticing a trend here? This is like the third or fourth time the ballots have been counted and it has been decided that Franken has lost. Then suddenly he finds more ballots that need to be counted. It's not like it has happened only once or twice, but this is a repetitive thing. It's almost as if he waits for the ballots to be counted, finds out he lost again and then discloses more ballots. It's getting annoying already, I believe every vote should be counted, but this just doesn't seem to pass the sniff test. It's not like Franken hasn't been given every opportunity... one of his campaigners/employees is actively involved in hand checking the ballots, he's had the ballots counted over and over again, and so far he's lost, lost and lost. Franken needs to just present all the uncounted ballots he may know about, have them counted, find out he lost and write a stupid book about it. This is starting to get annoying.

[WickedLou9]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Is anyone noticing a trend here? This is like the third or fourth time the ballots have been counted and it has been decided that Franken has lost. Then suddenly he finds more ballots that need to be counted. It's not like it has happened only once or twice, but this is a repetitive thing. It's almost as if he waits for the ballots to be counted, finds out he lost again and then discloses more ballots. It's getting annoying already, I believe every vote should be counted, but this just doesn't seem to pass the sniff test. It's not like Franken hasn't been given every opportunity... one of his campaigners/employees is actively involved in hand checking the ballots, he's had the ballots counted over and over again, and so far he's lost, lost and lost. Franken needs to just present all the uncounted ballots he may know about, have them counted, find out he lost and write a stupid book about it. This is starting to get annoying.

I'm suprised he even made it this far. He doesn't really have the qualifications to be a senator does he? I usually vote Democrat but I would have had a hard time voting for him. He should just get out before he embaresses himself any further.

[Swift]

What is this sore loser mentality? You lost man! Get over it. Come back in 6 years! Sheesh, why can't he just get over it already. I'm so glad he did lose though. He would have been a horrid senator

[SoFlaJDM]

:yawn: these ballots have been in dispute for at least 2 weeks... the story was that they just added 12 more to the disputed

[motivez]

I don't know what you guys are talking about as far as he "lost" .. he hasn't lost yet, thus the recount.

There's thousands of ballots which may have been improperly rejected, which need to be sorted through and the ones which are valid should be counted, regardless of who they vote for.

Most counts change slightly after the recount, ballots are found that weren't counted, counts were off by +/- a certain amount, etc.. but no one pays attention 99% of the time because the margins are big enough.

[JaJae]

Franken will likely lose, thank God. But it's getting annoying. They're finding ballots in cars, finding machines they forgot to count, found stacks of absentee ballots they forgot. Each time they find more ballots to be counted it seems it's after it's been clear Franken has lost. Then his campaign suddenly finds out about more votes to be counted.

I believe every vote should be counted, but the timing of "finding" votes seems to be strange.

[motivez]

You're just repeating the same nonsense that you did in the original post.. shouldn't this have been made in conspiracy theories?

Franken hasn't "lost" yet.. and Coleman hasn't "won" yet. If you had been following the recount effort, it's still pretty unclear at this point who's going to win when the dust settles from the challenged ballots, and the potential legal challenge about improperly discarded absentee ballots.

There's no special timing involved in "finding" ballots, and as I pointed out, the final totals often vary as they re-check every precincts count, but no one pays any attention because the races aren't close enough for it to matter.

I suggest you go read some of the older posts on the race / recount on FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right .. they've covered it very well and explain the situation about ballots.

[JaJae]

Franken is down. He's been getting closer with the recounts, but there were times it seemed pretty clear Franken was going to lose. Then all of a sudden POOF more ballots. In at least one case I know of Franken is demanding more votes be counted in a district than people who signed in to vote that on election day. One of his campaign employees got herself a seat on the handful of people actively deciding which way contested ballots go and whether or not they even count. Franken's campaign has been operating under the assumption that they currently have hundreds of more votes than has actually be counted for them. The whole thing is just wacky. Whenever they find more votes he waits till their counted, when it's found it's not going to be enough he puts out the sob story (now in video) to the media and waits for another batch to be pulled from someone's trunk. If that doesn't help enough he tries to get more votes counted in districts than people who signed in to vote.. expecting those "extra" votes would be more in his favor.

And while Al Franken is putting out these sob story "My vote didn't count" videos he's also attempting to have all challenged votes thrown out. In other words any questionable ballot that was casted gets counted. If that's the case Franken claims he wins by 4 votes and Coleman gets to go home. That seems to be the only way right now that Franken would win... basically if he allows himself to have all the improper or illegal votes casted for him and all the improper/illegal votes casted for Coleman just get counted. Since there seems to be more problems with votes casted for Franken, let's just ignore that fact and Franken wins! WOohoo! With that it wouldn't even matter that one of his employees is working on the challenged votes. This is the type of crap I would expect from Hillary Clinton.

[SoFlaJDM]

still no mention in this thread of the 133 ballots that disappeared from a heavy franken area

[motivez]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Franken is down. He's been getting closer with the recounts, but there were times it seemed pretty clear Franken was going to lose. Then all of a sudden POOF more ballots. In at least one case I know of Franken is demanding more votes be counted in a district than people who signed in to vote that on election day. One of his campaign employees got herself a seat on the handful of people actively deciding which way contested ballots go and whether or not they even count. Franken's campaign has been operating under the assumption that they currently have hundreds of more votes than has actually be counted for them. The whole thing is just wacky. Whenever they find more votes he waits till their counted, when it's found it's not going to be enough he puts out the sob story (now in video) to the media and waits for another batch to be pulled from someone's trunk. If that doesn't help enough he tries to get more votes counted in districts than people who signed in to vote.. expecting those "extra" votes would be more in his favor.

And while Al Franken is putting out these sob story "My vote didn't count" videos he's also attempting to have all challenged votes thrown out. In other words any questionable ballot that was casted gets counted. If that's the case Franken claims he wins by 4 votes and Coleman gets to go home. That seems to be the only way right now that Franken would win... basically if he allows himself to have all the improper or illegal votes casted for him and all the improper/illegal votes casted for Coleman just get counted. Since there seems to be more problems with votes casted for Franken, let's just ignore that fact and Franken wins! WOohoo! With that it wouldn't even matter that one of his employees is working on the challenged votes. This is the type of crap I would expect from Hillary Clinton.

Again, if you had been following the process, you'd know that what's going on isn't really that strange.

The difference in the counts is easily explained, and Nate over at 538 has explained it well. The SoS office subtracts every contested ballot from official counts, different newspapers report using a different methodology, and the campaign uses their own method knowing what they know about challenged ballots and the hourly counting of ballots.

Both campaigns are challenging ballots, most of the challenges are frivolous on both sides, but that's par for the course.. and yet you're only criticizing Franken... hmm..

There's a legitimate argument to be made about counting the absentee ballots which were rejected, there are certain criteria that have to be used to reject an absentee ballot, and it's clear in many cases (several hundred identified so far for sure) that those criteria were not followed. Of course they should be counted.

The rest of your post is just conspiracy theory nonsense, like they have a stash of ballots somewhere that they can just pull out.. please.. give the rest of us a break.

[motivez]

Originally Posted by SoFlaJDM

still no mention in this thread of the 133 ballots that disappeared from a heavy franken area

Why would there be? Ballots which favor Franken lost? Not to worry!

Any ballots found at all? The counts changed during a recount? Zomg they have printing presses in trunks of cars!

[David Octavius]

What is the vote tally now?

[motivez]

Still undecided, here's a report from a liveblog of the State Canvassing Board today:

10:10 a.m.
On to the improperly rejected absentee ballots. So far, in 49 counties, 4,823 rejected ballots have been examined and 638 of those were determined by local officials to have been wrongfully rejected, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann reported. If that trend holds true, with more than 13 percent of the votes tossed improperly, that would end up totalling 1,587 statewide, he said.

“It looks like a significant number,” Ritchie said, turning to Swanson. She said her staff started with the assumption that “every lawful vote should count.” The improperly rejected ballots were cast by “voters who did everything right on Election Night,” she said. “They followed the rules … they had their votes rejected through no fault of their own.”

She said a review of case law found that the board members can neither count the votes themselves, nor order the county election officials to count them. The board can, however, ask the county canvassing boards to count the improperly rejected ballots and report the new totals to the board in amended reports.

In other words, there are potentially 1000+ ballots which were cast properly, but improperly rejected by the various counties.

Why suggest that they shouldn't be counted, JaJae? I don't care who they voted for, if you voted properly on election day, your ballot should be added to the final tally.

I'd be saying this even if the votes favored Coleman.

[motivez]

Al Franken received a potentially major boost towards his hopes of becoming Senator on Friday, when Minnesota state officials ruled that absentee ballots rejected because of clerical or administrative errors should, in the end, be counted.

The decision by the state canvassing board -- which was unanimous -- is, essentially, an official request for county officials to go back and count the wrongfully rejected absentee votes. This process has already begun in many counties and could portend sizeable gains for Franken.

The Democratic challenger has spent the past few weeks demanding that the state review the approximately 1,500 absentee ballots that they contend were unlawfully dismissed. Many of these votes have come from traditionally Democratic locales where, for one reason or another, voters are more likely to make clerical errors when completing their ballots.

The state has set December 19th as the end date for the sorting and counting of this absentee ballot pool (hardly a restrictive time frame for completing the task). The Coleman campaign retains the right to appeal the decision to a district or state court.

With the hand recount over in the state's Senate race, Franken's campaign claims to be clinging to a four-vote lead. This count, however, assumes that none of the challenges to ballots during the recount process will be upheld. In short: the race is incredibly tight. The inclusion of this pool of rejected absentee ballots could very well push Franken into the Senate.

UPDATE: The Franken campaign got more good news from the canvass board hearing. The state had, during the recount process, been unable to locate 133 ballots from the Minneapolis area. But rather than disregarding these votes, officials decided that they will use the results from Election Day.

Franken Wins Major Victory In Absentee Count

A good day for Franken and counting properly cast votes.

[motivez]

Well?

[SoFlaJDM]

no news yet... maybe tomorrow

[The Great Catpiss]

Originally Posted by Swift-Bass

What is this sore loser mentality? You lost man! Get over it. Come back in 6 years! Sheesh, why can't he just get over it already. I'm so glad he did lose though. He would have been a horrid senator

I used to think that way. Its like, if it was that close then you didnt deserve to win.

Unlike sports and games, though, politics is life changing stuff. If you really believe in your views, and that you can change things for the better, then it may be worth every little fight to win.

[motivez]

The day is going pretty well for him.. he's now the favorite to win the recount, especially if the incorrectly rejected absentee ballots are counted like they should be.

[SoFlaJDM]

so... looks like he never lost in the first place

[Swift]

My God, we'll have to tolerate 6 years of this imbicile in the senate? Joy.