Friday in the MN Gov. Recount between leader Mark Dayton (D) (margin +8755) and trailer Tom Emmer (R) was packed with legal briefs. The MN Supreme Court accepted a petition from Emmer and the MN GOP and invited "interested parties" to file responses.
And did they ever! Dayton's side did, and so did Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. Hennepin County (Minneapolis) weighed in....as did Ramsey County (St. Paul)....and so did Anoka County (Anoka; northern suburbs of Twin Cities.)
And what the counties and every other "interested party" had to say, officially, yea even formally and legally, to the Emmer/GOP petitions is what made the weekend so much fun.
C'mon below the fold with your morning drinks of choice.... UPDATED just past the fold!
CROSS-POSTED at Minnesota Progressive Project
UPDATE #2
Mike McIntee at the Uptake CONFIRMS! The MN Supreme Court will hear Oral Arguments over the briefs filed the the Governor's Recount TODAY at 2:30pm CT. The Uptake will carry it all at their website. Put on the Popcorn!
UPDATE
The Uptake.org http://theuptake.org/ is reporting if oral arguments before the Supreme Court are coming they will occur at 2:30pm (Central Time). In addition to Hennepin, Ramsey & Anoka counties noted in this diary they also list Dakota County (Just south of St. Paul; suburban & ex-urban sprawl) as having filed a brief and ready to present oral arguments.
At 10:00am the Uptake will cover LIVE a press conference by Citizens for Election Integrity, their results of investigating issues of alleged voter fraud in the 2008 election.
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The briefs themselves and their highlights were all covered in Saturday's diary here.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And, by request, if you need a perfect holiday gift for the political animal in your life, the collected & edited diaries from the 2008 Franken-Coleman Recount, you can click on the Orange at this site:
All Things WineRev
THE MEDIA RECOVERY
Two years ago in the Franken-Coleman Recount there was a sharp difference in the coverage between the traditional media (big city newspapers and local TV) vs. the on-line "New Media" (MN Progressive Project, Minn Post, Minnesota Independent and citizen video media at the Uptake.) Despite yeoman efforts by Rachel Stassen Berger (RSB, a crackerjack reporter back then for the St. Paul Pioneer Press) and some occasional moments from others, the New Media lapped the field on coverage, analysis, and insights.
This time around its closer...and better all the way around. The New Media (led by Jay Weiner at Minn Post, along with Joe Bodell at MPP, Mike McIntee at Uptake, and Andy Birkey at MNIndy) are still better, but the trad media has upped their game. RSB is still writing, now for the Minneapolis Star Tribune but the Pioneer Press is lively too and the Star Tribune's crew is showing some chops
The media read over the briefs as did your loyal WineRev and they were impressed...mostly by the tone of the County briefs. Doug Grow over at the Minn Post noted:
Not surprisingly, elections officials from Ramsey, Hennepin and Anoka also submitted petitions to the Supreme Court saying that Emmer’s request has no merit.
But what perhaps was surprising was the gusto in which those officials hammered Emmer’s claims.
GUSTO!
http://www.minnpost.com/...
The Minneapolis Star Tribune (prospering in their recount coverage under the aegis (Aegis I say!) of Rachel Stassen Berger's excellent reporting) headlined the triple responses:
"County officials blast GOP request for vote match
Counties say Tom Emmer's call for signature count is unwarranted."
BLAST!
http://www.startribune.com/...
The Minnesota Independent's Andy Birkey strutted his stuff from 8th grade English class in Sarah Palin's face and led his story with:
"Counties, Dayton and Ritchie File Documents Refuting Emmer's Claims."
REFUTE! (A real word, not a Queen of the I-Quit-arod word-ish creation.)
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
The St. Paul Pioneer Press' Jason Hoppin dug down a little further and wrote some stuff that sounds like he was pouring ketchup on his Rice Krispies for breakfast. (In MN ketchup is considered exotic, spicy, hot sauce...reserved for the rarest of recipes, seldom seen here in the Land of the Bland.)
Indeed, Republicans' hopes that there are tens of thousands of what (MN GOP chairman) Sutton (the Hutt) refers to as "phantom" ballots dimmed Friday as local officials, in responding to the suit, began reporting whether they'd found extra ballots. According to court documents:
In Anoka County, election judges were able to reconcile the ballots in all precincts but one. Out of 131,700 votes, officials said there was no evidence that the sole extra ballot was cast by anyone other than a legitimate voter.
In Ramsey County, officials said there were just five unexplained ballots out of more than 192,000 cast but that there was no reason to toss out those five.
In Hennepin County, Minnesota's largest, officials found discrepancies in 15 precincts for a total of 22 ballots and said they would work to resolve the discrepancies but did not want to throw out votes.
Together Anoka, Hennepin and Ramsey County cast nearly 800,000 votes in the Nov. 2 election, or about 39 percent of the statewide total. With Emmer needing to close a nearly 9,000-vote gap, they found just 28 unexplained ballots between them.
That last paragraph is a killer from Jason. Work that out over the other 61% of the voters in the other 84 counties the total will come to...70 (NOT 17,000, Sutton! Not even close you son of a hairball!). 70 votes...to try to overcome a lead of 8755? Really?
Dayton should go on the air and say, "Emmer? I'll make a deal with you. You concede the election and I'll let you have the 70 votes!"
But hold on. Hoppin was living up to his last name. He filled up the bowl again, maybe splashed on a little Everclear to wash down the ketchup, and called up the University of Minnesota...."Mathematics Department, please? Hello, Dr.? Oh, its Dr. Gray. Good to meet you. Oh, this is a conference call...How do you do Dr. Arnold?
"Yes, this is Jason Hoppin at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Just checking something for a story about the recount. If you have a total pool of voters of about 2.2 million, the top 2 candidates finish 8755 apart, and you would pull, say, 1/2 the total votes out and throw them away...(Seinfeld cue!)
What are the odds the guy trailing by 8755 would win out? Yeah. Uh-huh. As compared with what other events happening at random? Ok got it. Thanks! I'll note you both in the article. Thanks again."
Statistics. Love 'em. Hate 'em. (like I did back at Ohio State when we econ. majors had to take 1 course in, what we called, "sadistics.") But this time the Magic 8 Ball has bobbed up "Love 'em!"
But statistically, Emmer could remove hundreds of thousands of ballots and still face extremely long odds of overcoming the DFLer's lead. According to University of Minnesota mathematics professors Larry Gray and Douglas Arnold, even if Emmer were to randomly remove half of the ballots cast in the election — more than 1 million — his chances of overcoming Dayton are less than 1/100th of 1 percent.
Furthermore, if Emmer were to get 30,000 ballots withdrawn at random from Ramsey County alone — which tilted heavily toward Dayton — Emmer's chances of overcoming Dayton's lead are still all but nonexistent.
"There's other more likely events, like an asteroid comes," Gray said.
While Jason is sleeping off breakfast you can read his full story here:
http://www.twincities.com/...
OTHER COUNTIES, OTHER LEGALITIES
And why were Hennepin, Ramsey and Anoka Counties so...feisty...in their responses? Well other than feeling their integrity and the soundness of the election system is being unfairly questioned, it might be they saw how the MN GOP was picking on some of the other counties outstate. This might be the Big Counties saying "You can't pick on the little counties! They're our cousins. Lay off, or get a load of these briefs..."
The election was Nov. 2, Tuesday. By Thursday the MN GOP was already bombing the county auditors (chief election officials in most places) with requests/demands for all sorts of records, copies, etc.
In particular they picked on St. Louis County (Duluth; strongly Democratic) and Pine County (Pine City, Sandstone; north of St. Paul, about 1/3 along to Duluth). When they didn't answer quickly enough the GOP trumpeted they were filing suits.
Pine County auditor Cathy Clemmer said they had not seen the Data Practices Act (for election information) request until a local newspaper forwarded them the lawsuit, which included e-mail requests and follow-up letters sent to the county. She said they also first learned of the lawsuit after receiving it from the newspaper.
SNIP
Following a conversation with Republican attorneys, Pine County plans to send out the documents by Friday.
"I dont think they handled it as well as they could have," Clemmer said. "It would have been much simpler to pick up the phone and say, 'Gee whiz, we haven't heard from you. Did you get our e-mail?' Instead of going directly to a lawsuit."
NOW, of course, having rattled the saber, the counties having scrambled to comply, apologies having been published, yes NOW the GOP has decided NOT to pursue these lawsuits. ("A nice county you have here. Lots of bottles...(Knocks three or four to floor). It would be a shame if any other unfortunate breakages would occur. But, I would be willing to help keep your inventory from shrinking....")
http://www.scribd.com/...
THE EMMER UNDERPINNINGS, or SOME UNDERPINNINGS ARE UNDER-ER THAN OTHERS
When the GOP filed their petition (joined by Emmer) Wednesday a big piece of the foundation of it was a set of 11 affidavits. These are from election judges, almost all of them in Hennepin County.
Now you want your election judges to be utterly fair and even handed. They can be political (indeed, they probably got into being an election judge because they like politics or find it important) but you really want them to leave their politics locked in their car on election day out in the parking lot. Overwhelmingly I think they do.
So to find out election judges are contributors to candidates of one side or the other is not that big a deal. But when they are Tea Baggers....well, I start to wonder a bit.
Andy Birkey at MN Independent dug through the affidavits and uncovered that 2 of them are from election judges who are heavy into Tea Party work as well.
Joel Burns, listed in the complaint as a GOP witness, was chair of the campaign of Republican Deanna Boss who ran for the state House in Minneapolis’ district 62B, according to campaign filings. Boss is a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots of the Twin Cities.
John Larkin is another witness for the GOP with connections to the tea party movement: He founded the tea party group The 56 Club, which is based in Eagan.
I am wary of this sort of stuff. These people worry me (and not just politically. If one of them is filling up their car at the gas station, these are the sort of people who will light up a cigarette while pumping. Yes it thins the herd, but I'd rather not be there if you get my drift.) Make of it what you will:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
TRUE CRIME AFOOT
Boil the oil for scum bags like this. The MN AFL-CIO has 2 reports of union members getting phone calls asking people for their credit card info to "support the Dayton recount." The callers are apparently trying to pass themselves off as members of the AFL-CIO. A total scam, and no truth to the alleged rumor the Union is soliciting donations this way.
Nice catch by Eric Roper at the Star Tribune:
http://www.startribune.com/...
EXCESS VOTES? OR JUST EXCESS HOT AIR?
One of the chief complaints by the GOP is that precincts have "excess ballots" (more ballots counted than total # of voters who signed in to vote.) According to the GOP this is EVIDENCE (a word they have been noticeably allergic to in past recounts; Coleman attorney and GOP general counsel this time around, Tony Trimble, in particular seemed to find the concept of "evidence" as either a foreign language or the square root of a negative number.)
But how could there be more ballots than voters and it not be criminal? Hey Tony! (Sutton or Trimble; either one will do!) Here are three reasons (happens every election somewhere)
1) The ballots with the bubbles that need to be filled in are printed new for each election (the names of candidates keep changing for one thing.) Once in a while a poll worker will hand one of these rather heavy sheets to a voter, but the ink was still warm and TWO ballots are stuck together. The voter fills in ovals on the front (of one ballot), turns it over, fills in ovals on the back (of the second blank ballot) and then inserts what she thinks is one ballot into the scanning/counting machine.
The machine swallows the ballot, reads the ovals and clanks it through its rollers...which break the ink seal and 2 (1/2) ballots fall into the catch bin. Later that night..."EEEK! There are more ballots than voters! Fraud! Acorn! Crime! Felony!" Of course there is one ballot ONLY filled in on the front and another (the next one in the bin actually, if you are careful) ONLY filled in on the back.
Jason Hoppin touched on 2 more in his article. (Carver County is just SW of Minneapolis; Chanhassen, Chaska. Ex-urban Sprawl and nouveau riche. Blue Earth County is Mankato, about 50 miles S and a little W of Minneapolis.) Emphasis added by WineRev.
Carver County officials found only a few extra ballots but said they appeared to be caused by election judges themselves forgetting to sign the register when they voted.
In an affidavit, Hennepin County election manager Rachel Smith argued that counting voter receipts is actually a more accurate way of tallying voters than counting signatures, calling the method "universally preferred." That was backed up by others, including Blue Earth County Auditor Patty O'Connor, who said the problem with counting signatures is that voters sometimes don't sign the register, even though they are required by law to do so.
"You have to remember, I'm in outstate Minnesota, where we all know each other," O'Connor said, adding that it's easy to forget to follow the letter of the law when chit-chatting with a friendly face. "The wife signs and the husband doesn't, and off they go."
MAKIN' STUFF UP
...and hoping wishing makes it so is actually the preferred GOP operating style. After all, it took from election day 2008 until June 1, 2009 until Norm Coleman's lead attorney Joe Friedberg said to the MN Supreme Court, "There was no election fraud. There was no voter fraud." But until then, SOP was makin' stuff up to see what might stick.
After an un-accustomed appeal to "evidence" above, the GOP went back to default position, throwing stuff around.
Rep. Tom Emmer was quoted Thursday in an interview with Forum Communications Capitol Bureau Chief Don Davis about an apparent irregularity in a precinct in "one western Twins (sic) Cities precinct."
"Emmer said that 900 voters signed in while 930 votes were cast," Davis reported in Forum newspapers that circulate in Minnesota, including those in Fargo-Moorhead, Duluth, Willmar and Worthington.
Well Jay Weiner at the Minn Post went to hunt down this "western Twins (sic) Cities" precinct by, you know, calling up a bunch of precincts with roughly those numbers. Nothing.
So then he contacted the MN GOP and asked, "What gives?"
As it turns out, according to Emmer communications director Carl Kuhl, Rep. Emmer had "heard" about this alleged precinct in a conversation with someone. But Emmer’s lawyers haven’t yet found the allegedly questionable precinct.
WOW! Boy, "evidence" like that will crush Mark Dayton like an over-ripe pumpkin. Devastating revelation! Open and shut court case!....or not.
Jay's whole story here:
http://www.minnpost.com/...
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MONDAY, MONDAY, MONDAY!
Its here! Not only have all the briefs been filed but TODAY the MN Supreme Court will tell EVERYONE if they want to hear oral arguments, possibly TODAY. Doubtless the Uptake crew of citizen journalists will have any actual press conferences up immediately and LIVE on their website. (http://theuptake.org/).
Meanwhile, if you have reason to be down at the Supreme Court, it will be a "Walk of Legal Celebrities": Lillehaug & Nauen for Dayton, Attorney General Lori Swanson, Michael Toner & Eric Magnusson from Team Emmer, Marc Elias and Kevin Hamilton from Team Franken Dayton, County Attorneys from Hennepin, Ramsey, & Anoka, Secretary of State Ritchie perhaps. A LOT of legal talent in one spot. (And if the Supremes call for Orals but on a different date, then the "Walk of Legal Celebrities" will likewise be postponed to that date.)
If anything breaks I'll try to get you an update. If I can't, check in over at the Uptake, esp. the LiveBlog. Whatever happens I'll fill you in tomorrow...which is supposed to be the first meeting of the State Canvassing Board to officially order the Recount.
Hope this will hold you with most of the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.