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A Challenging Recount Job

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At the Hennepin County elections warehouse in Minneapolis, one calm person is in the eye of the storm between election judges, the media, and campaign lawyers: Cindy Reichert, Director of Elections for Minneapolis. Cindy describes the challenges that arose on the first day of Minnesota's senate recount. We also take a look at a sampling of challenged ballots, including a glimpse of a "Mickey Mouse" ballot, and a bit of MN GOP chair Ron Carey being interviewed. Produced by Chuck Olsen for The UpTake

Election Official Rules on "Frivolous" Challenges

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On Day 1 of the Minnesota Senate Recount between Al Franken and Senator Norm Coleman most recount locations ran smoothly and politely. However, there was a small amount of tension at the recount location in Ramsey County. Coleman campaign representative Bob Murray challenged two ballots that were for Franken. Ramsey County Elections Directory Joe Mansky declared the challenges "frivolous" and accepted the ballots for Franken. Franken's campaign representative had challenged one ballot for Coleman. Manksy held the ballot for Coleman and Franken's representative withdrew the challenge in deference to Manksy's decision

Unusual Numbers And Box Seals-Almost .5% Error In One Ramsey County Precinct

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Courtesy of Grace Kelly of MN Blue who was observing the first day of the recount in Ramsey County for The UpTake

Here is my first day report of the recount. The most interesting item is that Precinct 5-2 (Ward 5-Precinct 2) was off by 9 votes, which is startling because rarely does a precinct count vary by as much as 4 votes. An undercount could easily happen, it would simply mean a pen was used that the machine could not read. However these 9 votes were machine overvote, meaning the machine read more votes, than the manual recount read, which is surprising. Sometimes a ballot jams the machine and is re-submitted in error, when people think it wasn't read. So that can account for a few, not 9. The total manual count is 2000 is 10 off from the 2010 ballots cast from the Secretary of State website (a friend looked this up for me). So, this is a mystery and an outlyer. More info on this later in the article.

I hope this image conveys the intensity of people watching the recount. On the sides of the lead election official there is a Senator Coleman representative and a Senator Franken representative. Three additional election officials sit around the table. Around the table hovers extra observers from the campaign, non-partisan observers, media, other election officials and of course people watching the live stream on The UpTake (about 20-30).

Process: The process is that a election official retrieves the ballots out of locked secure storage. The boxes including the envelope of write in ballots is opened. The ballots are turned and straightened so the front page is showing upright. Then the lead person sorts into Franken, Coleman and Other while both campaign representatives watch. Then the ballots are counted in stacks of 25, the stacks of 25 are grouped into 100 piles and then 500 piles.

Less than 25 piles have a pink sticker with the number. Basically the piles are counted once, although most of the time a recount was asked for. So seven people watch and count together from 1 to 25 on each count. It is very intense.

Any ballot can be challenged and is put into the challenge envelope. The only challenges that I saw were due to the ballot being a different weight than the other ballots. Any challenged ballot is put into a separate envelope and NOT counted.

There is also an envelope of duplicates, which are ballots that someone filled out incorrectly and was then given a new ballot to fill out. So all ballots, even these spoiled ballots are kept and tracked.

Each campaign has forms that they are keeping track of what happens, especially the differences. There was some confusion since the number of ballots cast in the precinct was not available to compare to, that made many people uncomfortable. Only the certified count Franken and Coleman numbers were available to compare to.

More on Precinct 5-2

So we have these numbers, counted at least twice

Senate ballots that did not vote Franken or Coleman - 321

Senate Certified Franken count - 1115
Senate today's manual Franken recount - 1108
Difference - A loss of 7 votes

Senate Certified Colman count - 573
Senate today's manual Coleman recount - 571
Difference - A loss of 2 votes

My friends lookup of election day ballot numbers - 2010
Todays total count - (431 + 1108 + 571) = 2000

I will post more if I get a more detailed breakdown from the Secretary of State's website.

Wait, wait, there is more about Precinct 5-2

There are two ways the boxes are secured. One through distinctive twist ties and one through judge signed labels that are put over the edge of the box. These labels normally have to be cut to get into the box. Anytime the box is opened, new labels with election judges signatures have to be reattached. This was not done on Precinct 5-2 boxes as my pictures show.

This box is correctly done.

This is precinct 5-2 box without the election judge labels over the edge.

Wait, wait, one more item about Precinct 5-2

The envelope that was supposed to hold all ballots that had any write in at all was empty. Those write in ballots could have been mixed in but I did not spot any. I also could not see the back page where most write-ins are written. Since the number that my friend found on SOS website (2010) is 10 off from today's count, could the stack of ballots with write-ins have been left behind? Or did ballots get read by the machine more than once? Otherwise, how did we get a 9 vote loss? Did the machine read that poorly? Hmmm, a mystery!

There is a more complete report that the election judges fill out like machine problems etc. I would love to see that report for precinct 5-2.

I don't know if additional precincts can be added for performance review. I would certainly like this precinct to be performance reviewed, because these are unusual numbers.

Updates will be posted here if I receive more information.

Glitches On First Day Of US Senate Recount In Minneapolis

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Minneapolis has more than 209-thousand ballots to recount in the next few days for Minnesota's US Senate race. The time that it will take to count those ballots got a little longer today when the recount had to start over because ballots with identifying marks were not being pulled aside. In Minnesota, marking a ballot with your name or initials invalidates the ballot.

The UpTake's Chuck Olsen talks to Minneapolis Elections Director Cynthia Rechert about the problems of the first day of oounting.

Franken Campaign Gets Absentee Ballot Info

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On day one of the Minnesota Senate Recount 2008, Al Franken scores a major victory in Ramsey County court to obtain the names of those voters whose absentee ballots were rejected.

Minnesota Senate Recount Update

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Lawyers for Norm Coleman and Al Franken dueled in Minnesota while the state canvassing board reset the race to zero-zero and the recount begins.

**http://the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/en/videogalleryView/id/1321/

Decision On Rejected Absentee Ballots Will Wait

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Attorney for Al Franken's campaign, David Lillehaug argued befor the Minnesota Canvassing Board that rejected absentee ballots should be reviewed and counted if they were cast properly. The board took his request under consideration and recessed to a later date so it can read all of the data and court opinions related to the request.

Minnesota's Attorney General's office earlier had issued an opinion that the rejected absentee ballots should not be counted. An opinion echoed by Fritz Knaak, Attorney for Norm Coleman's Campaign.

The video player below contains the action at the Canvassing Board as well as news conferences by Mark Ritchie, Norm Coleman's attorney Fritz Knaak and the Franken Campaign's Andy Barr

The Franken campaign sited at least four cases where absentee ballots were improperly rejected and said they might have more examples if they were given access to the liste of people whose ballots had been rejected. The four instances named in a Franken press release are below.

The brief cites four examples of Minnesotans whose absentee ballots were improperly rejected and whose votes have wrongly gone uncounted.

Jessup Schiks (Kandiyohi County) voted absentee, but his vote was not counted because it was determined that the signature on his absentee ballot did not match his signature on file. However, Mr. Schiks has signed an affidavit confirming that his absentee ballot is his own.

Bruce Behrens (Goodhue County) lost his right to vote because local elections officials believed that his witness was not a registered voter - when, in fact, she was.

James Langland (Pennington County) voted absentee in person - but his ballot was not counted. His county auditor - who witnessed the ballot - agrees that Mr. Langland's vote should be counted, and has contacted the Secretary of State's office in an attempt to remedy the issues.

Ordell Adkins (Pennington County) had her ballot rejected because her county believed she was not a registered voter. In fact, Ms. Adkins is registered to vote, and has voted in every election since 1994. She voted absentee in 2006.

**http://the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/en/videogalleryView/id/1318/

Media Calls MN GOP Chair On Being "Presumptuous"

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Minnesota GOP Chair Ron Carey told reporters on Monday that it was "presumptuous" of Franken to take a trip to Washington, DC. Franken is visiting the nation's capitol to give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others an update on the recount in Minnesota.

Minnesota reporters didn't take Carey's bait, instead asking wasn't it presumptuous of Carey to declare Coleman the winner, not once, but twice when the state has yet to certify any results?

Coleman Lead Grows To 215 After Mistake Found In Audit

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A mistake discovered in an Elk River precinct has given Norm Coleman 11 more votes and a 215 vote lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken in MInnesota's US Senate race. The new figures come from an audit that will be presented to the State Canvassing Board on Tuesday. In the audit, three to five random precincts were hand counted in each of Minnesota's Counties. The audit is done after each Minnesota election to check the accuracy of the voting machines.

Sherburne County had turned in its audit last week showing Coleman had not picked up any votes in the Elk River precinct. Today's correction to the audit did not change the number of votes that were hand counted for Coleman. It did however change Coleman's electronic ballot count to match the number counted on election night. In other words, someone had put the hand counted ballot number in the hand counted column AND the electronic counted column.

Tuesday Minnesota's State Canvassing Board will meet to accept the totals and formally order a recount since the difference between the two candidates is less than one-half of one percent. The UpTake will carry the Canvassing Board meeting live at www.theuptake.org starting at 1pm CT.

Recount Observers Rebut GOP Ctiticism

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Common Cause, Citizens for Election Integrity and the League of Women Voters respond to GOP criticism of their alliance to conduct an observation of the Minnesota Senate Recount. Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization designed to hold local government accountable to public interest, will be overseeing the Minnesota Senate recount, which begins on November 18th. The advocacy group held a press conference to address their role in observing the recount process.

**http://the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/en/videogalleryView/id/1306/