Al Franken closing in on Norm Coleman
By SilentPatriot Thursday Nov 20, 2008 3:00pm
Yesterday kicked off the first day of the Minnesota recount and while a whole host of ballots still need to be tabulated, things are looking good for Al Franken. There is still substantial ground to be made up, but a net gain of 43 votes is a pretty good start. Nate has more.
According to data just released by the Minnesota Secretary of State, Al Franken has gained a net of 43 votes on the first day of that state's recount process. Norm Coleman had a lead of 215 voters over Franken in Minnesota's certified, pre-recount tally; that margin is now 172 votes.
Minnesota reports that it has thus far re-counted 15.49 percent of its ballots. If the first day's results are indicative of the pace that the candidates will maintain throughout the recount process, Franken would gain a net of 278 votes over Colmean, giving him a narrow victory. For any number of reasons, however, the results reported thus far may not be indicative of future trends.
We'll just have to wait and see how things shape up. In case you forgot, a Franken victory would put us at 59 blue Senate seats (counting Lieberman and Sanders). If Franken does manage to pull this off -- indeed, even if he doesn't -- all eyes will turn to Georgia on December 2 for the run-off between the execrable incumbent Saxby Chambliss and challenger Jim Martin.
The Franken campaign is optimistic. Keep your fingers crossed.
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therefore, it's going to happen.
A Franken victory in Minnesota will absolutely demoralize the Republicans.
A standing ovation in Heaven from Paul Wellstone, his wife Marcia, their daughter, staff members and pilots of the plane they were in when they were killed in a few weeks before his re-election date (I'm quite sure he would have beaten Norm Coleman).
It will be a joyous day for the Progressive community if Al Franken wins, and therefore all the more reason to tune in to C-SPAN to hear what he has to say during the rousing debates that are surely coming our way over the next years.
And it will KILL O'Reilly. Or give him a reason to live.
...The people that gave us Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale would vote for this Coleman POS
Forgot to mention Paul Wellstone, too.
the right wing sites going apeshit over Franken Stealing the Election.
I won't link it here (you can google it, should you choose) because I don't want to give their sites traffic, but it is great fun watching multiple rightwinger heads explode.
I love it!!
the right wing sites going apeshit over Franken Stealing the Election.
I can't even imagine. Tim Pawlenty tried to perpetuate a rumor that Franken is doing so, even though he later recanted that comment.
*sigh*
Franken is stealing the election by going back in time and forcing the Minnesota legislature to enact a statute mandating a recount in cases like this.
*gesturing at sky while overhead camera circles*
FRAAAAAAAANKENNNNNNNNNNN!!!!
Go for it! We need a smart, dependable man like Al in the Senate to carry out Obama's agenda.
I am confident that Al will pull this one off. The seat will go to a Senator that Paul Wellstone can be proud of.
We'd all be great to make Paul Wellstone Proud. How people like him die and people like Cheney survive is a conundrum.
Perhaps Norm Coleman will ask the Congress to award him 10,000 votes because he's too big to fail.
Hope the trend continues and you are victorious!
It was hard for me to take Franken seriously. I know Coleman is close
to the Antichrist, but Franken is SUCH a Clintonophile. Read his
books, he gushes and he knows it. Franken has brains to be a
progressive, let's just see if he has the balls to be one!
Oh noes, he supports the Clintons!!
*rolls eyes*
Roll your eyes, but Bill Clinton is a war criminal. And Hillary
voted for the war. Remember? Huh? She has the blood of Iraqi
children on her hands. Bill killed half a million Iraqis, mostly
kids and old people.
Write that down in your little book. Both Clintons are
Republicans.
No war, no war crime.
but honestly...I have no interest in seeing his balls.
...and Franken is milking this 'joke' until the punchline will have the maximum impact. Or that's how I'm choosing to interpret this.
They say that Franken's fate depends on "non-deliberate undervotes".
As a non-deliberate undervoter, I wish him well.
Maybe if we all pedal as fast as we can, we can push Al over the finish line.
I know it isn't nice to judge someone by their looks, but Coleman is just creepy looking to me. Al on the other hand looks like someone who would be funny. I don't think I have ever seen him when he didn't have a smile on his face.
n/t
Minnesota Senate Recount Challenged ballots
You be the judge!
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200...
Just saw Tweety discussing some of the ballots. Looks like pure horseshit to me. Ballots are fill-in-the-bubble type. Some of the ones in question look like the voters pen made a slight mark in another bubble yet the Franken bubble was clearly filled in (comparing a dot in one bubble to one filled in and comming up with the argument 'I don't know who you intended to vote for'), another the bubble was filled in and the person colored out side the lines (Tweety: is that an arrow pointing to the other candidate?'), ...
If you can't say that clearly the vote was for Coleman, its bullshit to take it away from Franken. Dots, ink blobs in the margins should not be a reason to ignore a full filled in bubble. Likewise, if someone half fills in a bubble for Coleman and didn't fill in for Franken, OBVIOUSLY they didn't intend for Franken to get the vote.
let's win one for him!
5:10 central time THURS 11/20
recount figures as posted at http://ww2.startribune.com/news/metro/electio...
Coleman lead reduced to 163 votes -- not including additional plurality of challenges (recounted votes challenges by observers) that if factored into count reduce Coleman lead to 90 votes
32% of precincts (24% of vote) counted
fun to refresh once or twice an hour during the day
Election counting always gets ugly when things are close. The all of the imperfections that come from any human enterprise come clearly into view. When it a few votes here and there count, there's a lot of incentive to game the system and when any call goes the wrong way someone's going to call foul.
It would have been much better if Franken had been able to obtain a few more votes so it wouldn't be close. Perhaps if Democratic Caucus appointed Chairman Zell Lieberman hadn't been stumping against the Democratic candidate, things might have been different?
The Chambliss-Martin runoff will be decided long before the votes are recounted (and the lawsuits are decided) in Minnesota's Senate race. Watch the Georgia election on Dec. 2, and then watch as all eyes turn to Minnesota until ... sometime in January, I'd say.
Stuart Smalley saves Minnesota with some deep thoughts by Jack Handy.
I can laugh till I nearly choke on Jack Handy's quotes. They're really quite uniquely mad.
Please don't cover the recount like this; it is foolish and irresponsible. There is no meaning to any running counts or margins. The only thing that matters is the final tally.
In the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election this is how the race was covered -- the media pretended that anything other than the final count mattered. Thus was born the idea that Rossi won twice and Gregoire only once, so Rossi was the legitimate winner.
Wait patiently for the final tally and the announcement of the winner. To do anything else is irresponsible. There is no reason that I know to assume that Franken will win -- or lose. The race was close enough that vote counting irregularities could change the outcome. In all likelihood, no matter who wins, the outcome will change in that the final vote totals will undoubtedly be different.
If there is one thing this country doesn't need, it is bloggers who behave like the MSM.
Relax. Have a beer. (Or fifty.) And wait for the final count.
I am SO GLAD that we in Washington State didn't have to live through another too-damn-close gubernatorial election with Rossi again. If it had been that close again I think we would have see torches and pitchforks marching over the Cascades.
Al Franken.
I've just had a hunch about this guy all season.
Go Al!
I want Franken to win, obviously. But if he doesn't, how's this for an idea? Obama appoints him Chairman of the FCC. Then he can bring the Fairness Doctrine back, and then send Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly a set of Teddy Bears that say:
"Time for you to go back into hibernation, you big fat idiots."
--signed: Stewart Smalley.
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