Word made flesh

Update: Better title.

Recounting past tales

Where is all the conservative bloviating about election theft in Minnesota this cycle? Oh, right, their guy, Tom Emmer, is behind this time, behind by almost 9,000 votes.

When Al Franken and Norm Coleman were nip and tuck, Minnesota wingnuts screamed that Franken and the DFL were stealing the election. No amount of transparency in the recount - not even posting every single contested ballot on line - could allay their hysteria.

Now, however? The Republican-desired recount is not a mugging at all. In fact, important GOP officials still can't stop fighting the battle of 2008, even as they follow the Democrats' example to keep recounting in 2010:

State GOP chairman Tony Sutton jumped in: "We are not going to get rolled this time."

Sutton is morally stunted. He can't even apply the golden rule, can't see his opponents as justified in the Senatorial recount, all the while having totally signed onto this recount even though it is much less plausible that it might change the Election Day outcome.

Oh, and this time, Tim Pawlenty (R-me, choose me!) expects to remain governor for the duration of any recount. And maybe during any lawsuit filed by Emmer, too. So that he can govern in a term to which he was not elected with the now-Republican state legislature at his side.

"I don't think there's any downside to keeping this recount going on as long as possible," said a high-level Republican operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If we keep the process going, there are opportunities for us in the upcoming legislative session."

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:

• Democrats want to count (and recount, if necessary) the votes and let that determine the winner.
• Republicans want to win and the hell with the will of the people.

Republicans think elections are casino games, they are the house, and they should win all ties. And all races anywhere close to a tie. Maybe even all races that they just imagine they should win.

And the hell with democracy.

Other people's money

In the 2012 version of the Republican Party, merely conservative is a big loser when the baseline is batshit insane. Since Tim Pawlenty looks mild and, whisper, whisper, sane, he has to double down on the teabag insanity:

The possible contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination issued an executive order Tuesday that directs Minnesota state agencies and departments not seek federal grants under the health care measure, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama this spring.

The key to understanding Republicans: They're not looking out for you.

Confession

For the Party of No, a missing yes is just as good in the Senate as a present no. The continuing farce in Minnesota has become an illegitimate abuse of process.


Norm Coleman is a capable speaker of the wingnut creed.

North Korean style rhetoric

Sen. Al Franken has hired an aide. The Republican response?

"This is another shameful episode of disenfranchising voters from Al Franken, and his disrespect for the constitutional rights of all citizens. While the due process and equal protection rights of our fellow citizens are being denied, Al Franken is determined to thumb his nose at the Minnesota Supreme Court," [State GOP chair Ron Carey] said in a statement.

Kim Jong Il would be so proud.

Foolish consistency

Both Republicans and Democrats approach dead heat elections consistently:

• Democrats always say, "Count the legal votes, and certify whoever has the most."
• Republicans always say, "Tie goes to the Republican."

Norm Coleman's lead on election night should be completely definitive:

Norm won on election day and everything has been corrupt since then. Mark Ritchie = hack. --johngalt18

Today!

But John Boehner is telling the press that he's confident the Republican will win. No, not just confident. Jim Tedisco "will win."

For my part: Count the votes. Recount the votes. When the count is right, declare the winner.

Calvinball gets a new name

Colemanball:

As Coleman, a Republican, listened from his lawyers' table, Friedberg said that a strict standard requiring that each element of absentee voting be met -- being properly registered, signing both the envelope and application, having it witnessed by a registered voter, and more -- "doesn't exist anywhere in Anglo-American jurisprudence."

Read that again. Coleman's lawyer is explicitly arguing that the four corners of the statute don't exist in jurisprudence. To make sense, that means he is asking the court to disregard the law and make up new law.

The irony is that Bushists accused Democrats of this in 2000, when in fact Democrats wanted interpretation and standards for intent of the voter, which was already law. Republican Coleman's lawyers want to throw out the law and rewrite it for their convenience.

And their wingnut supporters will claim that Democrats are stealing this election. They really can't tell the difference between truth and a lie.

Franken sense

One commenter on CNN, someone who calls himself Musicboy8, gets the cosmic joke that reality is playing on the wingnuts, if only they had consistency circuits in their brains:

February 16th, 2009 2:39 pm ET

You know what the really funny thing is here? All of the Republican clones are upset that a man who was a professional humorist is going to be a Senator, and then they turn right around and bow at the alter of a dead president who starred in "Bedtime for Bonzo"…..lol. Sorry, little red voters, your double standard is showing. You lost, democracy won, not hush and let the new leaders start cleaning up your mess.

STFU, Republican gasbags

Joe Conason says what I've also been saying for weeks: Put up or shut up about election theft in Minnesota. So far, *crickets*.

Conason and I are both shouting into the whirlwind. The wankernuts on the right are not evidence-based. They don't care about the facts. They don't care about the will of the people. They only care about power.

They will always be lying liars, which is why they hate Al Franken so much.

Of the acreage, by the acreage, for the acreage

This is bar none the stupidest thing I've seen this year among items pretending to be smart. There's a reason no one outside the garment district has ever heard of Hemline school of law.

Driving around Cades Cove, Tennessee, I used to enjoy seeing startled woodchucks bolt for their dens. Now I have them living in my back yard, where they're still likely to bolt for the shelter of the nearest juniper in response to any unusual noise. I suspect that Vermont Woodchuck, over amid the Beavis and Butt-head entertainment of New England Republican (we're laughing at you guys, not with you), may wish he had a hole to bolt to:

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law St. Paul, Minnesota points out some interesting facts concerning the Presidential election...

Here's the Preamble to the Constitution, as taught at this non-existent law school:

We the Acres of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Land Mass, establish Empty Space, insure domestic Fatuity, provide for the common sagebrush, promote the general Lack of Human contact, and secure the Blessings of Wide Open Spaces to no one and no one at all, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of Sparsely Populated Counties.

Acres and counties vote Republican because, you know, they're dumb as dirt. Look for this report on Fox, if it hasn't been there already.

Oh, by the way, 'Chuckie has been Snopesed. Open mouth, then engage brain. If ever. This is why he's a conservative.

(Hamline University? Yeah, that's real.)

Satire, I hope

Hard to tell sometimes, but I fervently hope that no one is really this insane:

FRANKENWEENIE WILL NEVER WIN! THIS GUY IS A PRO'ABORTION, RAPIST THAT WANTS TO STEAL THE LECTION AFTER HE GAVE RITCHIE ALL THE MONEY THAT HE SHOULD HAVE PAID FOR TAXES IN 32 STATES. HE PAID MOST ELECTION JUDGES AND OBAMA WILL NEVER TOUCH HIM. HE AVOIDS FRANKENWEENIE LIKE THE PLAGUE. FRANKEN IS A CONVICTED FELON AND, CONSTITUTIONALLY CANNOT LEGALLY HOLD THE POSITION OF SENATE WITHOUT FACING POSSIBLE SODOMY JAILTIME.

On a story about tongue piercings of all things. The alternative explanation to satire is a pioneer in the new fad of brain-piercing.

(Although, the mere presence of such a bullshit story does signal a return to normalcy after Al Franken's victory in Minnesota.)

Unfairness doctrine

The frothing wingnuts are everywhere, spilling bile as if it were water. Now and then I find one willing to spill blood (Matt at January 5th, 2009 4:12 pm ET):

The end of democracy as we know it. This is whithout [sic] a doubt the most fixed election ever. There was no standard other than cheat enough to have Franken pull ahead and then stop counting.

When democracy ceases to function and if you pay enough money you can subvert the will of the people to your whims. Then there is only one thing left for the comman man to do.

Civil War.

Reading the hate and ignorance in any mass market comments section makes me less than sanguine of the happy fate of democracy. Sanguinary? Yeah.

There's plenty of ignorance on the left, though it comes nowhere near matching the sheer stupidity of the right, but the real yawning abyss of disparity is in hate. We make fun of them, despise some of them, hate a select few. They hate us all.

The wingnuts have forgotten their kindergarten lessons - how to use their inside voices, how to play nice with others, how to use their words instead of their puny little fists to settle disputes, how not to bite their classmates, how to accept not getting their infantile narcissistic way right goddamn now from mommy every goddamn time, how not to throw a tantrum even if they're disappointed. They have no sense whatsoever of a commonwealth that extends beyond them.

They have lost this most basic socialization - hey, they're against socialism, why not be against socialization - because of the swill they listen to on talk radio and Fox News. They have public models of ugliness that allow them cover to revise and extend that ugliness forever.

And that gives their petty little 2-year-old's ids such a thrill of delight that only isolation could ever make them stop. Instead, they have a permanent play date with their mutual dittoheads, with whom they have constant self-reinforcing tantrums.

America is much the lesser for it.

God must love idiots

He made so many of them. Yes, Abe Lincoln was much more generous than I am. Of course, he still wanted some of the idiots to vote for him.

Today's featured dunce calls herself doxiemom:

Why Should Frankenstein Win by Only 49 Votes?

When Coleman couldn't win with his 200-300 votes. Seems that Coelman's original 200-300 votes should trump Frankenstein's crummy 49. Coleman still has more votes.

I'm sure she has no idea what a doxie is, but that's the least of her being unclear on the concept.

Sweet sixteen, part 3

Been there, done that. Now it's time for me to stagger belatedly across the finish line with assessments of the remaining four ballots that Norm Coleman asked the Minnesota Canvassing Board to reconsider. (The Board rejected his request, I think mistakenly in some cases.)

13. Hennepin County, Plymouth W3 P 15, Ballot 6 - I agree with the Board that this is an undervote. It's what I call a false start, not a vote at all. There are more than a hundred such marks among the 6600-some-odd ballots that were challenged. Some are mere dots, some are larger than this example.

14. Lake County, unorganized territory #2, Ballot 1 - This is not at all similar to ballot 13, but the Board got it right, too. Every voted race has two marks, one a check mark, the other a filled oval. It's impossible to discern true voter intent from that. If the non-standard mark had been an X instead of a check, I might have accepted this as a Coleman vote, but a check is an approval mark, so I'd guess that this is slightly more likely to be a Franken vote than a Coleman, but a guess is not enough.

The comparable for ballot 14 is Le Sueur County, Le Center, Ballot 28. (The other listed comparable is Dakota County, Inver Grove Heights P7, Ballot 2, but it is apparently not posted on the MPR site.) This comparable is significantly different from ballot 14. This voter's standard vote mark is a filled oval with a diagonal slash that is probably a check mark. In addition, however, there are several down-ballot races that appear to have been voted with slashes only. To complicate matters, the Senate race is marked both ways, the filled oval with slash for Franken and the slash only for Coleman. However, the Coleman mark is the only slash on the ballot that has a perpendicular mark across it, too, and that justifies counting the vote for Franken. Why don't I think this slash is a check mark rather than a strike-through? There's no precedent of other check marks on this ballot.

15. Carver County, Victoria P2, Ballot 9 - A successful challenge from Franken that took a vote away from Coleman, and Norm wants it back. The only race whose mark has a slash through it is the Coleman mark, so I agree with the Board that this is an undervote.

16. Hennepin County, Minneapolis W7 P8, Ballot 3 - Similar to ballot 15 but a little more difficult to call. This ballot has a unique mark next to Coleman's name on a ballot that is otherwise very consistent in its use of Xes to signify a vote. The Coleman mark has two Xes and a filled oval, and frankly I have no idea what the voter intended.

The comparables are:

• Mahnomen County, Waubun, Ballot 1 - Doesn't appear to be comparable, although it is a puzzle why a voter would make the vertical lines on every race except President. I'd still count all the down-ballot votes, including the mark for Franken.
  
• St. Louis County, Duluth P16, Ballot 2 - A potential cross-out and unique in that, so I'd call this an undervote and take away a vote for Franken.
  
• Dakota County, Burnsville P10, Ballot 1 - If I looked only at the first column of the ballot, I'd exclude this Franken vote, but column three has similar votes, so I agree with the Board.
  

True to typical best-foot-forward presentation (so I've heard about high school debate, for instance), Coleman front-loaded his best arguments, but there are definitely some good arguments among them.

Final cumulative tally: +4 for Coleman, -5 for Franken.

Note: My calls here would deprive Al of 20% of his nanofilament lead. Too bad. Let the votes fall where they may.

Sweet sixteen, part 2

Back to the Coleman appeals of Canvassing Board decisions, even though the board has already rejected them, picking up with ballot 6.

6. Douglas County, Miltona, Ballot 2 - Pretty sure this is the right ballot since it actually has an ambiguity, though from name alone this other ballot could have been the one. This was ruled an undervote, not a vote for Coleman.
7. Dakota County, South St. Paul P2 W1, Ballot 1 - Another ballot with an X through the filled oval, also ruled an undervote.

Both of these ballots have intentional cross-outs. My criterion is that no other blackened ovals are Xed out. I think they were correctly ruled by the Canvassing Board. However, one of the comparable Franken votes has the same problem. Hubbard County, Lakeport Township, Ballot 1 is an undervote, while Blue Earth County, Mapleton, Ballot 8 is ruled correctly as a Franken vote because there are other votes with similar crossing marks in the oval.

8. Dakota County, Eagan P4, Ballot 1 - The comparable is Benton County, Langola, Ballot 1, and I agree they should be ruled the same way, which adds a vote for Coleman. Both have marks that combine a filled oval and an X, but there's precedent elsewhere on the ballot for that being an intended vote.

9. Dakota County, Eagan P12, Ballot 1
10. Le Sueur County, Waterville, Ballot 14
11. Hennepin County, Minneapolis W8 P4, Ballot 2 - Probable voter name only.
12. Hennepin County, Plymouth W4 P20, Ballot 1

All these ballots were ruled to be spoiled by identifying marks, but most of them were redacted from the public copies. The comparables (first 3 for Coleman, last 2 for Franken) from the Coleman campaign are:

• Ottertail County, Fergus Falls W1 P2, Ballot 2 - Editorializing on the ballot but no name.
  
• St. Louis County, Duluth P27, Ballot 2 - Write-in with a phone number. Could be the voter, but a write-in should be a legitimate vote.
  
• Wright County, Buffalo P1, Ballot 9 - Explanation to the counting machine (!?) with an apparent voter name.
  
• Hennepin County, Plymouth W3 P15, Ballot 2 - Explanation of cross-outs, although redaction makes the full picture less than obvious.
  
• Big Stone County, Odessa, Ballot 1 - Probable voter name crossed out.
  

Without seeing the redactions, it's hard to judge these ballots. Arbitrarily, I'm going to disqualify any ballot that needs to be redacted, as well as ballot 11, the third Coleman comparable, and both Franken comparables.

It's possible that I'm wrong to do this. The Canvassing Board could be enforcing a single standard that I just haven't heard about - or so I hope. It's possible that they want to accept any ballot for which the alleged distinguishing marks have another clear purpose.

Net tally so far (including the previous ballots): +4 for Coleman, -4 for Franken

Sweet sixteen, part 1

Norm Coleman is appealing sixteen ballots that the Minnesota Canvassing Board has ruled on. I don't have a problem with this. They need to get this right, and every vote clearly matters. I would, however, object if Coleman uses any erroneous ballots to attack the process.

Here's an attempt to be objective about the first five of the sixteen ballots:

1. Hennepin County, Minneapolis W13 P8, Ballot 2 - ruled no vote, I assume because of the apparent initials from the voter
2. Dakota County, Apple Valley P5, Ballot 4 - same ruling, same reason

The comparable Franken ballot that was ruled a vote is Washington County, Stillwater W3 P7, Ballot 88. Indeed, it has what appears to initials, as well. I've already stated that I think the distinguishing mark prohibition is obsolete, but it is the current law of Minnesota. The initials on the Coleman ballots are both in the same box as the votes, but the law doesn't make that distinction, so I agree that these ballots out to receive the same treatment. If the Canvassing Board is going to be liberal about distinguishing marks and look for intent to mark as well as voting intent, I'd give these two to Coleman.

3. Dakota County, Inver Grove Heights P9, Ballot 1 - ruled no vote

I don't need a comparable. There are easily more than 100 such votes in the original list of challenges, and they should be counted. This is a vote for Coleman and a clear error on the part of the Canvassing Board.

4. Wright County, Cokato, Ballot 6 - ruled overvote
5. Wright County, Annandale, Ballot 2 - ruled overvote

The comparables offered by the Coleman campaign are:

• Washington County, Oakdale P2, Ballot 19 - By the way, I'd rule this an undervote, not a Franken vote.
  
• Dakota County, Burnsville P17, Ballot 1 - Based on the voter's pattern, the possible overvote for Barkley is a cross-out, and this is a correctly ruled Franken vote.
  
• Stearns County, Brockway, Ballot 1 - Same ruling and reasoning as the previous example.
  

Problem is, they aren't really comparable. Here's how I'd rule: Ballot 4 is most probably a Coleman vote. The voter's pattern is predominantly to use both an X and a filled circle to represent a vote, and only the marks for Coleman for Senate show both. Ballot 5, on the other hand, is far too puzzling and inconsistent to be confident of voter intent, and I'd rule it an overvote.

Tally so far: +4 for Coleman and -1 for Franken

Update (12/30): See part 2 and part 3 also.

How to buy a vote

The Minnesota recount taught me about the prohibition of distinguishing marks on ballots. The actual relevant provision of statute is:

Subd. 13.Identifying ballot. If a ballot is marked by distinguishing characteristics in a manner making it evident that the voter intended to identify the ballot, the entire ballot is defective.

It's an outdated prohibition. Fortunately, the State Canvassing Board has been pretty liberal about marks, probably relying on voter intent, so that they have been able to count more votes that the voters clearly intended.

The prohibition itself will no longer perform its function, which is to prevent vote-buying. If a corrupt political machine wanted proof that its bought voters did their bidding on the otherwise secret ballot, they needed confirmation in the counting room, and an identifying mark for each voter would do the trick.

Here's an easy new way to buy votes:

• Require the suborned voter to take a cell phone snapshot of his driver's license in front of the bought ballot.

That should be easy enough to do. Doesn't everyone (except me) have a phone with at least a megapixel these days.

It is true that poll-workers might start to notice all the cell phones out and in use, but polling places are bound to become more like the mall or the roads anyway. The real hindrance to vote-buying is economic. These days, it would just cost too much. Come the next great depression, however, maybe not so much.

I still think it's time to repeal these ballot-spoiling clauses.

Evaluation of Coleman appeals still to come, but I had this in the can already, and I'm probably going to need to refer to it.

Update (9/3/2011): Clarified how identifying marks help vote-buying.

Could vote this way for years

Is this a Coleman vote? I concluded that I couldn't tell what the hell it is. There are just too many ambiguities in the full ballot (alternative link). For example:


There's just no consistent marking at all, so I would reject this ballot entirely.

One of the major flaws in the way we vote is that we never get our ballots back graded. They go in the hopper, and we never know whether they actually count as we intended them.

The voter who cast this ballot could cast similar ballots for years. Judging by the almost random but obviously intended marks over the printed rectangles at the left margin, he's not very capable of learning how to do it right, but there are many unsophisticated voters who could learn with a little more feedback.

A scanner that would show each voter its count of his or her marks would go a long way toward helping us actually get the government we want.

Plus 124 with 1000 to go

My personal count of Minnesota Senate challenges puts Al Franken a hundred and twenty-four votes ahead of Norm Coleman, with an even thousand challenged ballots yet to review. Franken has gained 316 votes by my count since he was behind by 192 after the initial phase of the recount finished.

Based on the past 5742 ballots I've reviewed and even accounting for some bias at the margins since I want Franken to win, I don't think there's any way Coleman can overcome this deficit. He's already in court arguing via Bush v. Gore to keep wrongly excluded absentee ballots from being counted, so they can't help him. That would be a miracle anyway.

It looks as though Coleman's only path to re-election is through the courts. You'd think he was already hiring enough lawyers.

Update: Plus 134 with 500 to go. Coleman needs 317 to 183 to tie. Na ga happen.

Update: Not enough votes left for Coleman to win. Franken leads by 114 with 113 challenged ballots left. Of course, that's just on my scorecard.

Update: Franken at plus 123 with 23 ballots left. The Star Tribune web app won't go forward by any means, and it won't show a ballot. The link to the large PDF is buggered, and the bottom line numbers that report the assessments of other people don't add up to enough ballots. It's better to have the canvassing board working with real ballots!

---

I am assuming that the Star Tribune's web application and database backend are working somewhat properly, and that's a significant assumption since they seem to have retooled it more than once while it has been on-going. Still, to a first order approximation, it's probably accurate enough. But no, I can't explain the discrepancy between the official number of challenges and the number of challenged ballots visible on the site.

Simmering shit soup

Journalists once tried to explain what was explicable. Now, many of them prefer to keep the shit soup simmering. The next day's story is so much easier to write if it's a slight variation on today's.

For instance, if there was a close election and a question arose about how to interpret ballots with similar marks, the AP would show us those marks in their contexts. Instead, the AP lets the completely explicable legitimacy of the process look questionable:

But the members split on another type of challenge, where an X appeared atop or beneath a filled oval. Some were ruled clear votes, others were set aside.

''We're not going to be entirely consistent. Part of it is going to be how the ballot strikes us,'' Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, a board member, said to no one in particular. ''This isn't an exact science.''

Here are ballot markings from two different ballots:




Pretty easy, huh? They both have to count the same way. Wouldn't that be a common standard for intent of the voter? Yeah, but only if you're as simple-minded as the Supreme Court was in Bush v. Gore.

The top mark in context looks like this:


Further, every other vote on the ballot is a filled oval without the X. For example, here's the vote for President:

The voter obviously intended to cross out the Franken vote and vote for Norm Coleman. Sure, he or she should have taken another ballot, but the intent is clear, and this is a legitimate vote.

So the second mark above is a cross-out and doesn't count for Franken? Instead, it's an undervote since all the other ovals are empty? No, look at its context. What does this second voter use to signify intent? Here's the second voter's Presidential vote:


This voter marked several other races with both Xes and filled-in ovals. This is an expression of valid intent.

Don't take my word for it. Go look at these scans:

• The Coleman vote: St.Louis_FloodwoodP1_challengedballot1F.pdf (alternate link)
  
• The Franken vote: St.Louis_DuluthP13_challengedballot2C.pdf (alternate link)

See, now that wasn't so hard.