Range towns continue to heighten drama in Franken/Coleman race

The Mesabi Daily News is reporting that Norm Coleman’s campaign is filing a data practices request after 100 additional ballots for Al Franken were recorded Thursday night from the Iron Range city of Mountain Iron. Naturally, Coleman’s people are in a tizzy amid the escalating national drama of the impending recount. Though I don’t know what happened in Mt. Iron, just as I don’t know why Buhl forgot to report its results until Wednesday, I have my doubts that this is an organized effort to change the election. Range towns might vote predominantly Democratic but they usually do a good job of party balancing their election officials. What has been historically true is that there are a small number of human errors committed in most counties, along with a small number of uncounted votes due to scan error. That’s why we have automatic recounts for extremely close elections. As long as the process remains open to outside observation by all parties this is the best way to determine the outcome.

Fun fact, Mountain Iron is the first city of the Mesabi Range, one of three major iron ranges in Minnesota. Actually, I know this current process is fair because in the classic old days of Iron Range machine politics some burly hunky would have showed up at the Secretary of State’s office with a box full of ballots.

“How many are in there?”

“How many do you need? I haven’t filled them out yet.”

Ha! Voter fraud used to be much funnier in the old days. Another thing Bush managed to screw up. This Senate race is just close in an increasingly unfunny way.

Comments

  1. We already have at least one report (see mn brown blog post witness) of issues with ballots, location, and quarantine of spoiled ballots…

    Minnesota Ripe for Election Fraud
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449334,00.html
    “…Correcting these typos was claimed to add 435 votes to Franken and take 69 votes from Coleman. Corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate. The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state House races.

    Virtually all of Franken’s new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct…
    …To put this change in perspective, that single precinct’s corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races…”

    Statistically this stinks of fraud!

    Sure, mn brown, must be Bush’s fault. //roll eyes//

  2. Irony! It’s irony!

    Explaining irony is ironic, so I won’t. Sometimes I say things to amuse and sometimes to make a point. Cross-contaminating (uh-oh, more irony) these two groups of statements puts the whole works out of context. And behold … the 2008 MN-SEN race as metaphor for this comment thread.

    I know you have every right to quote things in any context you want to fit a narrative you want to chase, but the situation is what it is. The whole problem with the canvassing/recount story is the assumption that one account, true or not, can be multiplied infinitely to prove either fraud or disenfranchisement or both. Just take a breath and count the votes. Then we’ll know.

  3. Yet you still don’t know know what happened to your friend’s spoiled ballot, don’t seem to want to know, and have a flippant attitude about such Shenanigans.
    How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?
    How many counts does it take to get Franken elected?
    725 … 477 … 336 … 239 … 221 …

  4. 725 … 477 … 336 … 221 … 180 …

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