Norm Coleman

My only comment on this sad event is had the GOP national braintrust followed this sort of advice. It would not have happened

Sarah Palin barnstormed across Iowa in the closing days of the 2008 election. Accomplished a lot, didn't it.

Get back to me when the GOP leadership attains a modicum of competence, please.

Everything in Congress hangs on 60 votes in the Senate. Right now, the Democrats have 57 Senators plus Joe Lieberman. They could get one more if the Minnesota recount in the contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is decided in their favor. It is beginning to appear that the Democrats are settling on a strategy of attempting to seat Franken after the state courts decide, regardless of where the underlying issues stand.

For example, check out this quote from Chuck Schumer in The Hill:

"We believe the law of Minnesota requires a candidate to be certified after all the state appeals are through, whether someone applies to the federal court or not," said Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

While Republicans are talking about this going to the Supreme Court, Democrats are playing that down. On Friday, Richard Hasen, who normally writes the excellent and critical Election Law Blog, argued at the blog of the American Constitution Society that SCOTUS wouldn't be likely to take the case. At dinner on Saturday night with a bunch of Democratic staffers and operatives, they all sang from this playbook.

This strategy seems calculated to avoid the hard question in this case.

Ben Ginsburg, Coleman's attorney, asks this question at Redstate

:

Does the law allow not counting one vote when others just like it were counted by other counties and cities? Should a person’s vote count depending solely on where he or she lives? Should a contest court disallow votes based on counting rules it adopts but which no Minnesota county or city used on Election Day? Is it right to disallow a vote because the Minnesota Secretary of State’s database wasn’t up-to-date about whether the absentee voter or their witness were really registered?

If the Democrats move forward on trying to seat Franken before the whole process winds down, they will be, in essence, short-circuiting the judgement of the court with "yes" answers to all these questions. Ultimately, the fundamental question that Democratic Senators will be voting that votes don't have to be treated the same everywhere.

They will be asserting that these kinds of facts should have no impact:

These voters remain disenfranchised because the Court changed the rules of the game on Friday, February 13th – long after the Election Day votes had been counted. Two and a half weeks into the trial and again yesterday, the court announced it would apply a “strict compliance” standard to judging the 11,000 unopened absentee ballots. That stands in contrast to the evidence at trial which showed that on Election Day, Minnesota’s counties and cities permitted ballots that “substantially complied” with the state’s laws to be counted. Altering the Election Day standard meant that thousands of ballots that would have been allowed on Election Day in most counties are now disallowed by the contest court.

I don't think we can say that things are over yet in Minnesota, but we could be inching closer to another confirmation of the GOP's rock bottom status. If Al Franken is elected a Senator, I think we can officially say that things can't possibly get any worse.

What are the broader lessons here? One of the big problems it seems we face is that we keep losing votes after Election Day. On the day after the election, Obama's Presidential margin stood at under 6 points. Now, it's 7.3 according to RealClearPolitics. A lot of this is West Coast absentees and provisionals. But the reality is that it's going to be very, very difficult to succeed in recounts if we tolerate 1 to 1.5 points of slippage in overall vote counts after Election Day, usually in their direction. And MN-SEN isn't even the worst. Remember when we suddenly lost OH-15 by more than 2,000 votes when they decided to count 26,000 Franklin County provisionals a month after the election? And I don't even need to remind you about WA-GOV in 2004, when a governor was elected courtesy of votes found in closets.

Even if some of these votes are counted legitimately (the Ohio provisions example), we are inviting a crisis of confidence in our election system if it looks like the winner is dependent on the time we count ballots: usually a Republican on the day of the election when standard procedures are followed, and then a Democrat after protracted recounts and court battles.

We must insist on basic good government reforms to increase confidence in election results. Some of these might be done federally (as amendments to HAVA) and others will need to go state by state.

• Full electronic voting with a paper trail audit. There's a reason Paul Carmouche didn't challenge a 356-vote margin in LA-4: because the voting was 100% electronic. Critics have made good points about the lack of a paper trail on many of these machines. But MN-SEN shows that optical scan ballots, preferable only to hanging chads, are not fulproof. While plenty of bugs have been demonstrated on e-voting machines, there's no evidence (to date) of actual votes being mis-counted or lost -- and a paper trail should greatly improve the detection and resolution of these issues in real time.
• All ballots counted within 72 hours. It shouldn't take weeks to count absentees and provisionals. Let's set a reasonable window for counting every vote -- like 72 or 96 hours -- understanding that this might be different in states that are largely vote-by-mail.
• Zero tolerance for lost-and-found votes. Negligence in handling voted ballots should be made a misdemeanor offense at a minimum. Election officials should pay heavy fines and face removal for incidents like the 133 "lost" Minneapolis ballots. Heavy legal penalties should be a deterrent to "losing" ballots that are then "found" at conveninent points in a recount. 
• An open election results standard. I want this for other reasons, but a bunch of tech people should get together to formulate a standard for the reporting of real-time precinct election results in XML that also covers 1) reporting status of absentees and provisionals, and 2) historical precinct data, including notional numbers from census block counts for re-precincted areas. For all precincts, we should know how many voters are registered to get a real sense of voter turnout as well as how many people voted in this precinct in the last few elections. Practically, this means that the spotting of anomalies can be crowdsourced to the online community. If turnout seems abnormally high or low for a precinct, we can know in real time.

The GOP, with the help of sites like Election Journal, has made it a priority to detect and prevent voter fraud before and during elections -- but we lack a similarly systematic approach to prevent the stealing of elections after the fact. (Arguably, such a strategy would have more of an impact.) More than a handful of races this year were in recounts or in limbo until after Election Day, and at the Senate level, all have been decided for the Democrat or are trending that way (Alaska, Oregon, and now possibly Minnesota).

As is readily apparent, many so-called "conservative" pundits like George Will http://www.thenextright.com/ironman/george-will-empty-suit-behind-the-bow-tie. Peggy Noonan http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=438 and David Brooks http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10830202 decided that rather than offer even tepid support to the McCain-Palin ticket, it would be way more fun to fire off a weekly columm attacking them and their campaign as incompetent.

Now John McCain and Sarah Palin are a big boy and a big girl and probably couldn;t give a rat's tukkus that some writers dissed them. And they can look to the political environment and their own campaigns to explain a 6 point loss.  Friendly fire didn't cost them that many votes.

But the elite pundits ought now to consider that while fragging Mac and Sarah for their alleged deficiencies, they inflicted a lot of collateral damage on the rest of the Republican party. Let's assume that some moderately substantial number of right-of-center voters were sufficiently moved by the media blitz of disgrunted conservative writers to stay home.

Well, George, Peggy & David, Senator Merkley sends his regards  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/11/06/2008-11-06_oregon_race_for_us_senate_called_for_jef.html

Congressman Kratovil also says thanks http://wjz.com/local/andy.harris.frank.2.861518.html

Congressman Perriero also will probably say thanks too  http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-11-07-0207.html

and we're still waiting to see if Senator Begich http://www.aksuperstation.com/news/local/34276439.html, Senator Franken http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/10/Franken_within_204_votes_of_Coleman/UPI-19251226343255/, Senator Martin  http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/stories/2008/11/11/senate_chambliss_martin.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13 or Congressman Brown http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1383995.html will also be sending warm regards

You see, when you decide to go shiv the top of the ticket, the entire party suffers when voters decide not to bother to vote.  And did it go unnoticed that Republican turnout was down this year.  http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/11/07/republican_turnout_declined.html

Notice how few liberals before the election---even those who were die-hard Hillary people---publicly dissed Barack Obama. That's because. hey ---they actually think winning elections sorta matters.

And it matters a whole lot for people out there in Senate and Congressional races downballot. I'm not sure what any of these people (save Ted Stevens) did to deserve this, but as I pointed out, fragmentation grenades are rather inexact weapons.

At some point a bill will pass that will be horrendously repugnant to any thoughtful Republican. It will pass by one vote---because one of these people wasn't there to stop it.

I look forward to the very erudite apology from the salon set "conservatives" then--hardly--they'll still be blaming the Republican rank and file as if we are the problem.   

Minnesota may turn out to be the most promsing of all the "blue" states, barring perhaps the traditional McCain playground of New Hampshire. A recent poll shows McCain within 5 points there and Coleman regaining the lead for the Senate

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/688a8abb-f1a6-4ef1-a588-63fcb2b3bed1

Now MN's 10 EV's aren't PA's 21, but it still seems like PA is further out of reach than this despite immense effort brought to bear by the McCaniacs.  Besides, Obama has pretty much thought MN was in his corner previously.

MN is also a state where Palin's outdoorswomen background could be expected to be a plus; besides she sounds like the police chief in this famous movie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(film).

It will be interesting to see if McCain or Palin make any appearances here over the last week. Certaintly Norm Coleman and Michelle Bachmann could use the help in the final days.

Jesse Ventura's NPR interview sparked huge wave of speculation about his entry into the marquee Coleman-Franken Minnesota Senate race over the last few days and although he backtracked slightly this morning, it was a fairly weak denial.

So which candidate does he hurt?  So far a pair of polls from Rasmussen and Survey USA are the only numbers I’ve seen testing Ventura’s potential entry.  Neither of these polls are particularly reliable sources, but broadly they show Ventura as either helping Coleman or not making much of a difference.

My gut on it is that after his tenure as governor Ventura is very well know – meaning that the early poll numbers are broadly accurate.  The Body's stated rational for running is opposition to the Iraq War which moves him to the left while his "crazy S.O.B." appeal would siphon angry/change/anti-system votes away from Franken.  All of that bodes well for Coleman.

Anyone know Minnesota politics and have an on the ground read on which candidate Ventura will help or any good rumors about him being in or out? 

My electoral map had 3 toss-up states on it, now it has 2. John McCain has led the last three polls in that state by an average margin of 5 points. Missouri is a swing and it will go back and forth. For now though, I'm going to put this one into the leaning McCain column. Below is my new map with leaners.

This leaves Obama up 252-249 with 37 electoral votesd undecided. Yes, for the first time in 208 years, a tie is definitely possible.

Body Slammed

What difference could the potential entrance of Former Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura into the U.S. Senate race make to the re-election chances of Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN.)? A massive one.

Unlike other Third Party Candidates, Ventura would enter with plenty of name recognition from his time as Governor. In a year of low Congressional Approval ratings, one can't discount the possibility of "The Body" going to the U.S. Senate. Coleman's approval ratings are hovering around 50%. A lot of people would like a change, but the clownish Al Franken isn't the solution. It's a sad situation that Minnesota Democrats have put themselves into. Jesse Ventura would be a more credible choice for Minnesota voters than Al Franken.

For Conservatives, the choice is clear. Coleman's pro-life, Ventura's pro-abortion and disdainful of religion. Ventura can't be counted on for judges, is sympathetic to the 9/11 truth movement, and has a somewhat unpredictable and inconsistent ideological vain. However, this may be one bridge we don't have to cross as it's not certain that Ventura will run. We'll have to see what impact he has, when and if he does announce.