I will source, however, the evidence against Ann Coulter’s claims made in her articles about the Minnesota Recount (12/15, 12/17). Specifically, she’s dubiously cited the following instances as evidence of vote fraud, when indeed it’s just shit that happens after elections: 100 mystery ballots in Mt. Iron, 133 missing Dinkytown ballots, 100 typo’d ballots, and 32 absentee ballots left in a car. None of these instances were vote fraud, and anyone who tells you that they are is lying or has something to sell.

Indeed, Coulter and her ilk are trying to sell you on the idea that any post-election fluctuations are unlikely, that recounts are dangerous because it only gives the Democrats a second chance to steal the election, and that Secretary of State Mark Richie has been bought and paid for by George Soros. But worst of all, she wishes you to believe that Minnesota’s electoral process is as corrupt as Illinois and as broken as Florida. For her to say any of this with a straight face, she’d have to be completely ignorant of the multipartisan State Canvassing Board that has been running the recount, of the armies of observers who watched every single vote get recounted, and of the fact that Minnesota has gone so far as to scan and publish online every single challenged ballot.

And you know what? She probably is.

Now, this is a bad decision, and I’ll tell you why. The board didn’t even bother to look at the rest of the ballot, just looking at it on the projector, and thus did not see that this voter filled in “Lizard People” for every other race and also filled in the write-in bubble in those races. In the Senate Race, the voter wrote in Lizard People but did not fill in the bubble, instead filling in the bubble for Franken. This is obviously a statement, saying “Lizard People are a legitimate choice in all of the races, and although they win every other race, in a contest between Lizard People and Al Franken, Franken wins.” Mark Elias failed to make this argument, instead contending that Lizard People is obviously not a person, and thus it shouldn’t count. Bullshit. Note to Franken: Get a new lawyer.

Quotes from the discussion
“This is the weirdest ballot.” -Kathleen Gearin

“No, this is not the weirdest ballot.” -Eric Magnuson

“What if this was a vote for Moon Unit Zappa? You don’t know there ISN’T a Lizard People. You and I don’t. You don’t.” -Magnuson

“What did we do when Jesse Ventura was written in?” -Gearin

“He is a real person.” -Magnuson

“We know that Lizard can be a nickname. This could be a person. Lots of people have nicknames… Beaver… Chopper… you know.” -Coleman Lawyer

“If someone wants to make a statement with their vote, they may not get their vote counted.” -Gearin

Other Funny/Good Board Decisions
- A vote for the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a different race, which was challenged as an “identifying mark,” was allocated to Franken. This election has been touched by His Noodly Appendage. Obviously.
- Someone filled in the bubble for Franken, but then added “stein” after Al Franken’s name, thus making him “AL FRANKENSTEIN.” Coleman argued that the voter changed the name of the candidate, and thus was voting for another candidate. The State Canvassing Board did not buy this logic, and reallocated the vote to Franken.

Top 5 Voter Turnout, 2008

Bottom 5 Voter Turnout, 2008

2008 was also the nation’s best year for voter turnout, topping the charts at 61.6%. This is in stark contrast with the worst nationwide voter turnout in 1998, with a dismal 38.1%.

Anyways, my trip was only a moderate success. I’ve gotten photographs, but none of them are very interesting. After asking her a few times, the Director of Elections for Minneapolis had refused to allow me access to the contested ballots “as an administrative decision,” meaning she didn’t damn well feel like it. So the only photos of contested ballots I could get were from afar, and even then, the election judges were covering up the parts of the ballot that had the Senate votes so as to foil me.

Your eyes do not deceive you, that is the ballot warehouse for Minneapolis, a monster of a building containing 10 teams of two election judges, one Franken representative, and one Coleman representative each. Not to mention the bulk of the warehouse being dedicated to housing a city’s worth of ballots, ballot transportation units, and ballot counting machines. On top of that, there are election officials, lawyers, observers, and media wandering around in the taped off zones in the center. Busy.

The recount was a fairly smooth endeavor, with election judges gliding through ballots that had been sorted by the machines, and verifying that they were indeed Franken or Coleman votes. Representatives from each campaign were watching intently – if a ballot looked questionable to them, they put it aside, and when the precinct was done, it would be brought over to the challenge table, where volunteers, lawyers, and election judges would duke it out.

The challenge table was made off limits to me and the only other media there today, KARE11 News. This table was usually crowded with volunteers who didn’t belong there, but were just interested to see how the challenges were going down. This was a quiet point where there were only the appropriate people there.

A challenged ballot. As I mentioned, judges were covering up the votes for Senate on contested ballots, but it’s easy to see how this voter may have screwed up. Come on, people, learn to read the instructions. To be fair, though, only 0.06% of all ballots are like this, so there isn’t an alarming number of stupid people in our state. Just enough to throw an election.

This is a bogus ballot being challenged by Franken. If you can see here, the mark for Coleman has been smudged. I’m not sure what the Franken representative might be thinking this could be – perhaps they were trying to smear the ink into Franken’s bubble? Probably not. This is an example of a ballot that will get denied its challenge by the Elections Director, who will be, as you will hear on KARE11 tonight, stopping all frivilous challenges from going up to the State Canvassing Board.

For more photos from the recount, feel free to visit my Flickr album.

It probably would not surprise you to learn that I was one of those arrested.

It’s a little late to give a first hand account of what happened leading up to the arrests, though a friend of mine who accompanied me to the protest wrote a very stirring account herself, and it’s a little late to speak out on the bully tactics that the police used in handling the protesters, though City Pages author Matt Snyders does an excellent job recounting the tale.

But it’s not too late to complain: why haven’t I had my trial yet?

I was arrested at 8:30pm on September 4, with no less than ten men in riot gear pointing their guns at me. I had flash-bang grenades and tear gas shot at me. That is to say, shot directly at me – I actually had a flash-bag bounce off of me before it went off. I was yelled at, and told that if I didn’t put my hands on my head and drop to the ground, that they will open fire on me. I was then cuffed, and forced to sit on the curb for three and a half hours, sitting right next to a 16 year old girl, an old woman walking home, and three journalists from MTV, Colorado Public Radio, and the City Pages (the very guy who wrote the above-linked article). I was finally processed and taken to the Ramsey County Jail, where I had to wait another two and a half hours until I was finally issued my citation and released.

I went through a lot. Or rather, Ramsey County has gone through a lot to make sure that criminals like me are off the streets and not exercising our First Amendment rights. And yet, I’ve just gotten off the phone with the Ramsey County Courthouse, and have been informed that, after 76 days, I have not yet been charged with anything. “Oh, you will be,” I was told, “Don’t you worry. Just call back in two weeks.”

Meanwhile, St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington is saying that while mistakes were made in the handling of the arrests at the RNC, “police tried hard to sort out innocent people and release them as soon as possible.” Yes, I was sitting next to three journalists, a 16 year old girl, and an old woman who was walking home. The old woman was carrying groceries. The journalists had RNC-certified credentials. The 16 year old girl was crying. And yet they all went to jail with me. In fact, when the City Pages journalist asserted that he was a journalist, he was ridiculed by a police officer, and told “Well, I heard that press are going to jail tonight anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

Yup. Police sure tried hard to sort out the innocent people.

Take last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal editorial. The Journal, using their vast, partisan brains, have deduced that since Norm Coleman’s lead has narrowed from 726 votes to 215 votes post-election, then obviously it’s because Al Franken has stolen the election. “This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn’t even begun.” Never mind election judges have always gone over their figures post-election night and issued corrections thereafter. And never mind that Norm Coleman has actually gained 800 votes since election night, with Al Franken gaining 1,347, and Dean Barkley gaining 258. It’s not that Coleman lost votes – it’s that Franken has gained more.

I was listening to Dennis Prager on 100.3 last Sunday, as the only other thing on was a really attrocious DJ on the Current and A Prairie Home Companion on MPR. Prager was talking surprisingly fairly about the Minnesota recount, as he wasn’t accusing Franken of stealing votes and eating small children or anything. But he brought this alleged “expert” on Minnesota politics in on the show, who was asked “What does the Minnesota voter intent law mean?” He replied, “I don’t know.” Prager tried to prod him, and asked, “Well, does this mean that if you put an ‘X’ instead of filling in the bubble, that your vote will be counted?” He replied, “No.” Huh. Really?

For all of the experts who are being brought in to talk on Talk Radio about the recount, allow me to give you a little primer. First, Al Franken is not stealing votes, but is just getting more post-election corrections than Norm Coleman. Second, the Minnesota voter intent law means that an election judge and a representative from each party has to divine the intent of the voter, rather than establish whether they had filled in the ballot correctly. This means that if you put an “X” instead of filling in the bubble, then your vote is counted. If you circle your candidate’s name, then your vote is counted. If you scratch out every single other candidate’s name except for yours, then your vote is counted. If you draw a little picture if a man that looks like one of the three Senate candidates, then your vote is counted. Third, either representative from the respective campaigns can challenge a ballot, in which case it goes straight to the Minnesota Canvassing Board, where Richie and a technically bipartisan panel (there are no DFL appointed judges on the panel, only GOP and IP appointed judges) will make a final ruling on the ballot. Forth, once the recount is over, if it’s a tie, it comes down to a coin toss. No reelection: Minnesota state statute 204C.34 is very clear, the winner is determined by lot. Fifth, this is not Florida. Stop calling us that.