Vote Counting Widens Eric Massa's Lead In A Big Way

Republicans consider counting every legal vote electoral fraud. I'm not joking; they really do. Here's what the rightist Wall Street Journal Editorial Page had to say about the efforts to count the votes in Minnesota:

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.

"Stealing a Senate seat" means making sure every vote is counted. Norm Coleman is doing all he can to prevent that-- including running to the far right 8th Circuit Court, a Bush-appointed travesty of partisan hypocrisy. So far, though, all of Coleman's tricks to disenfranchise voters have failed... so far.

During our live blog session with Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) today, she let us know that John Boehner's creepy little handpicked choice for the congressional seat being vacated by another of his puppets, Deborah Pryce, went running to a stacked Republican court trying to shut down the vote count-- just like Bush did in 2000 in Florida and like Norm Coleman did in Minnesota last week. Mary Jo:

Thursday night the Republicans on behalf of Steve Stivers showed that they were scared that this election is over and filed suit over some provisional ballots with the Ohio Supreme Court, trying to skip lower courts to a 7-0 Republican controlled court.

...Well there is some good news to report. The lawyers moved the case to the U.S. District Court because of federal issues pertaining to the provisional ballots. They held a hearing this morning and we are waiting for the judge to rule. We could hear as early as Monday.

The Helping America Vote Act prohibits votes from being discarded based on poll worker error and many of the ballots that Republicans are contesting clearly fall in that category. This is nothing more than Republicans trying to disenfranchise voters.

Earlier today I got an e-mail from Congressman-elect Eric Massa. Sore loser and pitiful Bush hack Randy Kuhl has refused to concede defeat even though Eric was projected the winner with a 4,414 vote margin. Eric, like all Democrats, was perfectly happy to have every last vote counted and yesterday the Monroe County Board of Elections "concluded their count of the absentee and affidavit ballots, and [Eric's] lead grew tremendously. Additionally, the recanvass of Monroe and Chemung Counties also concluded. As of right now, the district-wide recanvass is complete and all that's left to do is count the remaining absentee/affidavit ballots in Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chemung, Ontario, Schuyler, Steuben and Yates counties." Here's a "by the numbers" run down of where the race in NY-29 now stands:

• 4,487 - Eric's lead prior to Friday, 11/14
• 299 - Votes he gained from the Chemung/Monroe Recanvass
• 954 - His lead over Randy Kuhl from the Monroe County absentees and affidavit ballots opened today
• 11,000 - Total estimated number of absentee/affidavit ballots
• 5,100 - Approximate number of absentee/affidavit ballots opened in Monroe County
• 5,900 - Approximate number of remaining absentee/affidavit ballots that have yet to be opened in the other seven counties
• 5,740 - Eric's total combined margin of victory

Short version: 5,900 absentee ballots and affidavits left to be counted compared to a 5,740 vote margin. If you see Eric, feel safe to address him as Congressman-elect.

As long as we're talking about vote counts, the one in Alaska is progressing well. The latest count shows Mark Begich with 138,959 votes to 137,937 for convicted GOP felon Ted Stevens. Sarah Palin's husband's secessionist Alaskan Independence Party candidate Bob Bird is in third place with 12,144 votes. Looks like they screwed it up for Stevens. Remaining to be counted are about 16,000 questioned and absentee ballots from Anchorage and around 8,000 absentee ballots from Southeast and the Kenai Peninsula.

And in California vote counting is proceeding and it is still too close to call between Charlie Brown and the far right extremist the GOP is trying to replace indicted crook John Doolittle with.