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

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.

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.

Distinguishing marks

What's the problem with a distinguishing mark on a ballot, anyway? If someone wants to give up the secrecy of the ballot, why shouldn't he be able to write "Lizard People" on his ballot? It's not mature, but that's not a requirement for voting, thank goodness. It's a sort of masturbatory joke. Mostly, the joker has to laugh at his own joke, alone. Loser, but again, not illegal.

Only in rare races will the stupid attempt at humor be shared with anyone else, and that person probably already has a headache and is pissed off to be reconciling vote totals for Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse after untold hours checking the public in at the polls. So, try this, and you're not going to get a laugh, much less get lucky.

The Senate recount started in Minnesota shortly after the election on Nov. 5. Right away, the Franken campaign started challenging ballots due to claimed distinguishing marks. The Coleman campaign soon followed suit.

Many of these challenges were frivolous, stupid, and if consistently applied capable of disqualifying lots of random ballots where intent is crystal clear and nothing hinky is going on. If a stray mark or a smudge could disqualify a ballot, why not a distinctive method of filling in an oval?

Although, against that, there are an incredible number of Minnesota voters who put an X through the oval before filling it in. If they thought their mark was distinct, bzzt, wrong. The upside is that their votes will be counted.

It turns out that distinguishing marks spoil a ballot throughout the English-speaking world, at least. There's a lot of case law from the past 150 years or more about. Secret ballots protect the honesty of elections in two ways. First, they prevent some forms of intimidation. If the goons can't tell how you voted, they can't extract the consequences of dissent from your hide.

It's still true that they can intimidate you if they can tell how you're likely to vote, say, if you're black and therefore unlikely to vote for some lizard-brained sleazeball of a white supremacist. Just for example. But I digress.

Secret ballots also prevent a political machine from paying off voters who vote their way. They're not just for protection of the voter; they protect the election.

Once upon a time, political parties printed their own ballots (hence ticket), which they preferred to mark visibly so that they could keep track of their captive voters. Once the government took that over, you might be able to put your initials next to Boss Tweed's candidate so that the poll workers could tell. In either case, there would be a few extra bucks for you to spend in the bar celebrating victory. Not an honest victory, but a good stiff drink nonetheless.

As it is, since the late 1800s in the U.S., vote-buyers have had to trust that their voters will stay bought in the voting booth, and that's a mook's game. Consequently, candidates have to work on convincing voters by engaging their brains, or at least their pocketbooks in a less direct and venal way. Or that's the theory, anyway.

You'll notice, of course, that big media hasn't reported this story at all. It's not that they're suppressing it. It's too far down in the weeds for them, they don't know the facts, and they can't be bothered with thirty minutes of Google.

If you have a DailyKos ID, please go recommend the diary containing this piece that I just posted there.

Franken votes

If Al Franken does manage to eke out a nominal win (by a statistically insignificant margin), the turning point will be rejection of a huge number of bullshit challenges from the Coleman campaign in Hennepin County, particularly in Minneapolis itself, where Franken will recover challenged votes at close to a 10 to 1 rate.

I currently show Franken leading, although by a scant 20 votes. That's real votes, not the Star Tribune's simplistic projection. That margin is quick and dirty, and I'm regretting not looking more carefully at factors beyond voter intent. It's just too close to guess.

There's no way this is not going to court.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Back to reality

It doesn't matter what smart people may think about the Franken-Coleman recount. Minnesota is going to decide this election the old-fashioned way. That means more counting and recounting and arguing, in court if necessary, about challenges, excluded absentee ballots, lost ballots, and anything else that might change the outcome by one vote.

In the end, there will only be a few hundred challenged ballots that are hard to call, and we should all be able to sort them out and decide for ourselves. At least, we'll be able to sort out the voter intent. Duplications, invalid ballots, and chain of control won't show up well on the web.

I've been viewing the challenged ballots at the Star Tribune. Yes, I have looked at all 2240 available so far. Sometimes democracy requires sacrifices of personal hygiene, and it's a natural for blogging.

My conclusion: It's a nip and tuck race. Franken is gaining even though most of the challenges from both sides are bullshit (Franken has withdrawn 663 (PDF) of his challenges), but it's an open question whether he'll gain fast enough.

Even so, this race will come down to those excluded absentee ballots. Whether Franken or Coleman will want to check them remains to be seen. I would hope that, should Franken hold the lead, he would continue to argue for their review instead of expediently reversing himself.

The current consensus of other amateur recounters differs significantly from my own assessment. Yes, I have a bias, though I've worked against it. I've also mostly ignored the distinguishing mark problem challenged on both sides. I'm sure that there are a couple of other ballots I should have excluded. For example, I counted the infamous "Lizard People" ballot, and I probably should not have. (My reasoning, by the way: This dude - apparently - wrote "Lizard People" into all the races on the front of the ballot. On every one except the Senate race, he also blacked in the write-in oval. On the Senate race alone, he left the write-in oval blank and blacked the Franken oval.)

Still, the odd thing about the consensus counts at the Star Tribune is that my Franken count is only one vote higher than the consensus. There is no way I could possibly have unfairly excluded thirty-five Coleman ballots.

So, I wonder whether there's some freeping going on in this on-line exercise in what should be transparent democracy.

Note: Minnesota Public Radio has 2702 ballots posted for review.

We have the technology

We can make the Minnesota recount better.

For every challenged ballot, there's no reason not to put a photo of the challenged ballot and the challenge itself on line. Let the people see. Let the people judge for themselves

Democratizing the evidence would convince everyone (nearly) of the legitimacy of the election, and that's something we could use.

Update (11/23): Minnesota Public Radio has a few challenged ballots on display. There are a few close calls, but there are some embarrassing challenges for both sides (e.g. ballot 2 on day 1 by Franken and ballots 1 and 8 on day 1 by Coleman).

(h/t DailyKos)

Hippie kids and god bless 'em

First, an apology: Earlier I called the victims of the St. Paul police intimidation 'loonies'. They believe things that I don't, that I sometimes find absurd, but there are things they are right about, too. And the truth is that there is something very wrong with this kind of policing.

The biggest point of agreement I have with these anarchists is that we use our rights or we lose them. The authoritarian instinct runs deep in government, especially in institutions run by Bushists and their sympathizers. They're happy to turn any conversation between people whose views they despise into some dark and violent conspiracy.

Not ignoring the past

Of course, we have seen before that some of these hippie kids are likely not to remain non-violent, and there are hints of it in some of the videos Glenn Greenwald is in or links to. However, there is a suitable and legal police response to this. That response does not include further trashing of the Constitution, and the SWAT-level raids are clearly about politics, not about law enforcement. We should all be very fearful of the continuing escalation of Big Brotherism.

In further defense of these young radicals, they do have a better record than police riot squads in confining their violence to property.

Official accountability?

Last (for now), there's missing accountability in our system for official violations of the Constitution. Ramsey Co. Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who is behind these raids, is not going to suffer any consequences for their illegality. I know that's a prediction, and I hate when other people make those; I'll happily retract it and apologize if someone can show me any single time in the past twenty years when a police official did time or paid a fine related to a rights violation (not including official violence). It just doesn't happen.

Further, the judiciary is supposed to restrain this sort of police misbehavior. Who is the judge or judges who signed these dubious warrants?