Congressional Elections Results Thread

[NorthSideSox72]

CKnolls-

 

Please, again, source your articles. Unless you wrote those yourself. Just provide a link or credit or something. We need you (and everyone) to do that.

 

[BigSqwert]

Anyone else find it odd that the turnout in Alaska was lower than in 2004? Seeing that this was a historic election and their governor was on one of the tickets I must admit I'm a little concerned. That and the fact the Stevens was down 22 points in some polls beforehand and it looks like he will now win.

 

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

Anyone else find it odd that the turnout in Alaska was lower than in 2004? Seeing that this was a historic election and their governor was on one of the tickets I must admit I'm a little concerned. That and the fact the Stevens was down 22 points in some polls beforehand and it looks like he will now win.

We'll know tomorrow:

The Anchorage Daily News reports that the majority of the 81,000 uncounted ballots should be processed tomorrow. The campaign of Dem Senate candidate Mark Begich is hopeful that those ballots will turn around their current narrow deficit against incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Stevens -- and if not, Begich will have the distinction of losing an election to a recently-convicted felon.

[Cknolls]

The single most illuminating account of the shifting Coleman-Franken election results that I have found since the numbers started moving after 100 percent of precincts had reported Wednesday morning is this column by John Lott:

 

When voters woke up on Wednesday morning after the election, Senator Norm Coleman led Al Franken by what seemed like a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 221 -- a total change over 4 days of 504 votes.

 

Amazingly, this all has occurred even though there hasn't even yet been a recount. Just local election officials correcting claimed typos in how the numbers were reported. Counties will certify their results today, and their final results will be sent to the secretary of state by Friday. The actual recount won't even start until November 19.

 

Correcting these typos was claimed to add 435 votes to Franken and take 69 votes from Coleman. Corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate. The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state House races.

 

Virtually all of Franken's new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior -- a heavily Democratic precinct where Obama received 64 percent of the vote. None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct.

 

To put this change in perspective, that single precinct's corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.

 

The two other precincts (Mountain Iron in St. Louis county and Partridge Township in Pine county) accounted for another 100 votes each. The change in each precinct was half as large as the pickup for Obama from the corrections for the entire state.

 

The Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed these types of mistakes to "exhausted county officials," and that indeed might be true, but the sizes of the errors in these three precincts are surprisingly large.

 

Indeed, the 504 total new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482). It was also true that precincts that gave Obama a larger percentage of the vote were statistically more likely to make a correction that helped Franken.

 

The recent Washington State 2006 gubernatorial recount is probably most famous for the discovery of ballots in heavily Democratic areas that had somehow missed being counted the first and even second time around. Minnesota is already copying that, though thus far on a much smaller scale, with 32 absentee ballots being discovered in Democratic Hennepin County after all the votes had already been counted. When those votes are added in, they seemed destined to cut Coleman's lead further.

 

Indeed, it is probably through the discovery of new votes that Franken has his best shot of picking up new votes. Despite the press pushing a possible replay of election judges divining voters' intentions by looking at "hanging chads" to see if voters meant to punch a hole, that shouldn't be an issue in Minnesota. The reason is simple: optical scan vote counting machines return ballots to voters if no vote is recorded for a contested race.

 

The Associated Press piece with the title "Most Minn. Senate 'undervotes' are from Obama turf" misinformed readers about what undervotes really imply. The Minneapolis Star Tribune headline similarly claimed "An analysis of ballots that had a vote for president but no vote for U.S. senator could have recount implications."

 

Voters themselves insert their ballot into the machine that reads and records their votes, and if the machine finds that a vote isn't recorded, voters can either mark the race that they forgot to mark or didn't mark clearly. Or if voters "overvoted" and accidentally marked too many candidates, voters can also get a fresh ballot. There should be no role to divine voters' intentions. If a voter wanted a vote recorded for a particular race, the machine tells him whether his vote in all the races was counted.

 

But voters also have the right not to vote in particular races. In this election, 0.4 percent of Minnesotans didn't want to vote for president. The number for the Senate race was only slightly higher at 0.8 percent. For congressional and state House races, the rates were 3 and 3.5 percent.

 

This pattern of fewer people voting in less important elections has been observed as long as people have studied elections. There are always at least a few people who don't vote for even the most closely contested races at the top of the ballot and fewer people follow and vote for races the farther down the ballot that you go. But this is not evidence of mistakes, quite the contrary.

 

With ACORN filing more than 43,000 registration forms this year, 75 percent of all new registrations in the state, Minnesota was facing vote fraud problems even before the election. Even a small percentage of those registrations resulting in fraudulent votes could tip this election.

 

To many, it just seems like too much of a coincidence that Minnesota's one tight race just happens to be the race with the most "corrected" votes by far. But the real travesty will be to start letting election officials divine voter's intent. If you want to discourage people from voting, election fraud is one sure way of doing it.

 

Since Lott wrote his column, Coleman's margin has shrunk yet again. As of this evening, the Minnesota Secretary of State's site reports that Coleman's margin over Franken has shrunk from 221 to 206 votes.

 

The incredibly stupid AP article by Brian Bakst that is discussed by Lott was run by the Star Tribune over the weekend and is accessible here. Perhaps some day someone will explain how it is that a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland writing for FOX News has just eaten the lunch of the Minnesota press corps that is toying with this story, but we can probably figure that out on our own.

 

JOHN adds: Based on my own research, I'm convinced that the two big increases in Franken's total that have been clearly reported on--Mountain Iron Precinct 1 and Partridge Township--are legitimate. The Coleman campaign sent a representative to Mountain Iron today to get to the bottom of that 100-vote jump, but the "corrected" totals look right in the context of the other races in Precinct 1 and the results in Precinct 2. I'll report further if the campaign comes up with anything, but if the revised total were wrong there should be a Republican election judge jumping up and down, and no such thing has been reported.

 

I don't know what the story is in Two Harbors, but the one Franken bump that is clearly dubious is the 30-plus absentee ballots that a Democrat ostensibly discovered in the back seat of her car. There is no way that should happen. There is, I suspect, much more of the same to come

 

 

 

Source:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449334,00.html

[Cknolls]

As of this morning, Norm Coleman leads Al Franken by 206 votes in the results reported for the Minnesota Senate seat at issue this year. The mandatory recount is to begin next week.

 

Hennepin County includes the city of Minneapolis and its suburbs. It is Minnesota's most populous county. One of our readers served as an election judge on November 4 for a precinct in Hennepin County and writes to reiterate a point we have previously noted:

 

As "machine judge" it was my duty to set up and take down the voting machine. I still find it very surprising that there has been no attention to the issue pertaining to problems with transmitting the election results in Hennepin county. I followed up with other city authorities and confirmed what I had heard.

 

The way the process is to work is that the voting machine or optical scanner is set up in the morning and a tape is run that is left in the machine showing a zero sum total for all the candidates. The polls are then opened and the ballots are fed in throughout the day. There is a counter on the machine which shows how many ballots have been counted, so that a comparison to the number of ballots used can be made. At the end of the day, the polling location is closed, and the absentee ballots are then addressed and fed into the machine.

 

Once all this is done, we must close out the totals. This entails a number of steps, one of which is transmitting the results. There is a modem in each of the voting machines which can dial up the county and send the results before the official tape is printed within the machine. This offers a level of security as the results are now off site, and the Official Tape with the totals is still at the precinct.

 

 

 

What happened on election night was Hennepin County set up the wrong IP address for all the machines in the county. There was no way to transmit the results to a secure off site location. Instead all the precinct's needed to pull the electronic cards out of the machine, along with the tape, and head to City Hall to consolidate and then have them sent to the County. This means that one person had all the voting results and ballots in their possession for that precinct. So it certainly dropped the level of security a level.

 

So in my mind the process was not followed, and the integrity of the procedure was flawed, if not corrupted. I personally recorded the totals from my precinct to view and ensure they were recorded properly, however some judges after working 16 hours, may not have felt the need to be as diligent, nor hang around to the very end. A cynic could say something could have been swapped out in the process.

 

Someone should be asking Hennepin County officials and [Minnesota Secretary of State] Mark Ritchie, why the transmission of votes from these machines did not work. and how can they ensure the integrity of all the vote totals without this added step. I really believe this needs to be addressed. This system did not work as it was designed and someone needs to explain why.

 

I can't find any report of the events raised by our reader in the local press. If accurate, it is an important element in the story now being played out.

 

 

 

Source:http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/022049.php

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[BigSqwert]

We'll know tomorrow:

 

My concern is that the turnout seems a bit fishy. The trend everywhere else was that turnout was a record high.

[mr_genius]

Source:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449334,00.html

 

The Democrats are just basically forging votes now. I hope one of them gets caught and thrown in jail. Every f***ign time they lose it's 'irregulatries' or some crap. They all do it. Even when they lose a primary against another Democrat, it was 'stolen'. It's this kind of stuff that reminds me why I really despise many of them.

 

*ends rant*

Edited November 11, 2008 by mr_genius

[mr_genius]

My concern is that the turnout seems a bit fishy. The trend everywhere else was that turnout was a record high.

 

Here we go with Alaska now. Let me guess, stolen.

[Balta1701]

The first batch of Alaskan early votes, absentee votes, and provision votes has been counted. Ted Stevens started the day with a lead of 3257 votes. Some 40,000 or so of the 100,000 remaining ballots have been counted now, I think.

 

If the count currently posted at the Alaskan Government page is accurate...Ted Stevens is currently losing by 3 votes.

[DukeNukeEm]

The first batch of Alaskan early votes, absentee votes, and provision votes has been counted. Ted Stevens started the day with a lead of 3257 votes. Some 40,000 or so of the 100,000 remaining ballots have been counted now, I think.

 

If the count currently posted at the Alaskan Government page is accurate...Ted Stevens is currently losing by 3 votes.

This is why you dont call races until they're over (COUGH). Franken is catching up to Coleman in MN too.

[EvilMonkey]

A WSJ article on how the election In Minn. is being stolen.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122644940271419147.html

 

Mischief in Minnesota?

Al Franken's recount isn't funny.

 

You'd think Democrats would be content with last week's electoral rout. But judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn't mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken.

 

When Minnesotans woke up last Wednesday, Republican Senator Norm Coleman led Mr. Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, he was ahead by only 477. As of yesterday, Mr. Coleman's margin stood at 206. This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn't even begun.

 

The vanishing Coleman vote came during a week in which election officials are obliged to double-check their initial results. Minnesota is required to do these audits, and it isn't unusual for officials to report that they transposed a number here or there. In a normal audit, these mistakes could be expected to cut both ways. Instead, nearly every "fix" has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.

 

For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car. The Coleman campaign scrambled to get a county judge to halt the counting of these absentees, since it was impossible to prove their integrity 72 hours after the polls closed. The judge refused on grounds that she lacked jurisdiction.

 

Up in Two Harbors, another liberal outpost, Mr. Franken picked up an additional 246 votes. In Partridge Township, he racked up another 100. Election officials in both places claim they initially miscommunicated the numbers. Odd, because in the Two Harbors precinct, none of the other contests recorded any changes in their vote totals.

 

According to conservative statistician John Lott, Mr. Franken's gains so far are 2.5 times the corrections made for Barack Obama in the state, and nearly three times the gains for Democrats across Minnesota Congressional races. Mr. Lott notes that Mr. Franken's "new" votes equal more than all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the Presidential, Congressional and statehouse races combined (482 votes).

 

This entire process is being overseen by Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who isn't exactly a nonpartisan observer. One of Mr. Ritchie's financial supporters during his 2006 run for office was a 527 group called the Secretary of State Project, which was co-founded by James Rucker, who came from MoveOn.org. The group says it is devoted to putting Democrats in jobs where they can "protect elections."

 

Mr. Ritchie is also an ally of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, of fraudulent voter-registration fame. That relationship might explain why prior to the election Mr. Ritchie waved off evidence of thousands of irregularities on Minnesota voter rolls, claiming that accusations of fraud were nothing more than "desperateness" from Republicans.

 

Franken and fellow Democrats are already waging a full-scale public pressure campaign to help turn the recount their way. That includes a push to turn what should be a straightforward count of existing legal ballots into a complete do-over -- mau-mauing election officials into accepting tossed ballots. The Franken campaign recently showed up before the Hennepin County canvassing board, demanding that its liberal members count 461 previously rejected ballots. To the board's credit, they unanimously voted no.

 

The Franken campaign has also been wrapping itself around Barack Obama's popularity to increase its recount potential. Minnesota has a voter intent law, which means that election officials can take a second look at ambiguous ballots. Mr. Franken's people are already arguing that a vote for Mr. Obama certainly indicated a vote for Mr. Franken. This can't possibly be true, however, because nearly every campaign poll showed Mr. Franken lagging Mr. Obama by five to 15 percentage points -- and on Election Day he trailed by 12.2%. Mr. Franken ran a nasty, polarizing campaign, and in any case he was part of a three-man contest.

 

The Coleman team is demanding the tapes from the voting machines on election night, and that's the least Mr. Ritchie can do. The Secretary of State should also investigate miraculous discoveries like the "forgotten" 32 car ballots. He needs to show voters, the press and the Coleman team that he's running a transparent process that focuses on previously counted votes, rather than changing the rules after the election is over.

 

With their party only three Senate seats from the 60 needed to break a filibuster (and two still not decided), Democrats have a political incentive to cut corners to steal a seat if they can get away with it. Mr. Franken and his left-wing allies also know that if Mr. Franken couldn't win election in this fabulous Democratic year, then the not-so-funnyman never will. If Minnesota wants to retain its reputation as a state with clean elections, it needs to run an honest recount

[NorthSideSox72]

Seems to me that the AK and MN senate messes are different animals. In AK, these absentee and mailed in ballots were expected, mathematically based on region of origin, to probably lean heavily Begich. So no surprise on the gap closing there.

 

But I have to admit, the fact that every error correction published seems to have helped Franken, makes me raise an eyebrow.

 

[EvilMonkey]

Seems to me that the AK and MN senate messes are different animals. In AK, these absentee and mailed in ballots were expected, mathematically based on region of origin, to probably lean heavily Begich. So no surprise on the gap closing there.

 

But I have to admit, the fact that every error correction published seems to have helped Franken, makes me raise an eyebrow.

I especially liked this part:

For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car. The Coleman campaign scrambled to get a county judge to halt the counting of these absentees, since it was impossible to prove their integrity 72 hours after the polls closed. The judge refused on grounds that she lacked jurisdiction.

 

Ooh, wait, I have 48 more in the trunk I forgot to count also, if you need them! Regardless of the outcome, that person deserves to never work an election again. Ever.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

I especially liked this part:

For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car. The Coleman campaign scrambled to get a county judge to halt the counting of these absentees, since it was impossible to prove their integrity 72 hours after the polls closed. The judge refused on grounds that she lacked jurisdiction.

 

Ooh, wait, I have 48 more in the trunk I forgot to count also, if you need them! Regardless of the outcome, that person deserves to never work an election again. Ever.

Yeah, I had the same reaction when I saw that. You were carrying around ballots in your car for 72 hours? You should not work in elections ever again. Period.

 

Why were they in there in the first place? Because if the state is having people move ballots around in their private cars, then that rule needs to change too.

 

[Rex Kickass]

Yeah, I had the same reaction when I saw that. You were carrying around ballots in your car for 72 hours? You should not work in elections ever again. Period.

 

Why were they in there in the first place? Because if the state is having people move ballots around in their private cars, then that rule needs to change too.

 

Here's why I don't think there's really any kind of treachery going on in Minnesota. There probably aren't enough corrections to matter. I would be very surprised to see the votes change in the recount by between 200-300 votes. We'll either see a larger change, or a smaller change, I would wager.

 

Small vote changes of 500 or so are fairly common in larger races between unofficial results and certification, because errors are made. Is there a chance of shenanigans here? Sure there is. However, if these were real shenanigans, I think you'd have seen votes change by about 1000, not 500.

[EvilMonkey]

Here's why I don't think there's really any kind of treachery going on in Minnesota. There probably aren't enough corrections to matter. I would be very surprised to see the votes change in the recount by between 200-300 votes. We'll either see a larger change, or a smaller change, I would wager.

 

Small vote changes of 500 or so are fairly common in larger races between unofficial results and certification, because errors are made. Is there a chance of shenanigans here? Sure there is. However, if these were real shenanigans, I think you'd have seen votes change by about 1000, not 500.

Even 1 vote is treachery enough, if it changes the outcome of the election. The statistical anomoly that every recording error just happens to benefit Frankin, and that in cases where those 'errors' occured, they ONLY occured with the Frankin/Coleman vote and Obama vote, but not any of the other votes on the ballot, are very damning.

[NorthSideSox72]

CNN says Begich now up 814 votes, with 40,000 remaining to be counted, mostly from the Anchorage area (which is seen as heavily Begich favored).

 

Looks like Stevens will in fact probably lose. Good.

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

CNN says Begich now up 814 votes, with 40,000 remaining to be counted, mostly from the Anchorage area (which is seen as heavily Begich favored).

 

Looks like Stevens will in fact probably lose. Good.

:headbang

[Rex Kickass]

CNN says Begich now up 814 votes, with 40,000 remaining to be counted, mostly from the Anchorage area (which is seen as heavily Begich favored).

 

Looks like Stevens will in fact probably lose. Good.

 

And by a margin that exceeds the recount window.

[Rex Kickass]

Even 1 vote is treachery enough, if it changes the outcome of the election. The statistical anomoly that every recording error just happens to benefit Frankin, and that in cases where those 'errors' occured, they ONLY occured with the Frankin/Coleman vote and Obama vote, but not any of the other votes on the ballot, are very damning.

 

But Franken is suing about 400+ absentee ballots that have not been counted. Those 400+ ballots haven't been just passed along... and in an election this tight, in a deeply blue county, there could very well be the margin that Franken would be looking for if shenanigans were in place.

 

Again, I'm not saying that there isn't something funny going on, but the signs here point to more transparency and error and less to any concerted effort.

[Cknolls]

The problem with the vote is these 500 or so votes have come after 100% of precincts reporting.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Stevens Pollster: Race Is Over, Begich Will Win

 

Alaska-based GOP pollster David Dittman, who worked for Sen. Ted Stevens during this year's primary race, believes Democratic challenger Mark Begich is all but certain to expand his current razor-thin lead and snatch the seat.

 

"I don't think Stevens can come back," Dittman said, noting that he thinks the remaining trove of uncounted ballots will help Begich "increase his lead."

 

Even if Begich's advantage grows, however, Dittman believes it's highly unlikely that Stevens will concede the race until every last ballot is counted. "He's probably waiting in Washington," Dittman said. "I haven't talked to him since the evening of the election, when I called and just told him I was sorry for the way it turned out."

 

Dittman believes early and absentee ballots, which compromise the approximately 40,000 votes left to count, will likely reflect Begichs' overall advantage so far among those who took advantage of either process. Heavy early voting occurred in the period that directly followed Stevens' conviction on seven felony counts of making false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms.

[Balta1701]

The problem with the vote is these 500 or so votes have come after 100% of precincts reporting.

This happens in every election, since we have so many disjointed, independent, poorly regulated systems. It's typically just not noticed because the margins are usually much larger.

[Balta1701]

Begcich now has a 2400 vote lead in Alaska. This is important, as anything less than a 1600 or so lead would trigger an automatic, state-funded recount. The Stevens campaign would have to take from its legal defense funds to pay for a recount if the margin is greater than that.

[mr_genius]

Begcich now has a 2400 vote lead in Alaska. This is important, as anything less than a 1600 or so lead would trigger an automatic, state-funded recount. The Stevens campaign would have to take from its legal defense funds to pay for a recount if the margin is greater than that.

 

Maybe someone could find 2k votes in their trunk, all for Stevens. Sounds reasonable.