Undecided House Races— And Where They Are Headed

Will Orange County be a Republican-free zone?

Currently there are 9 House races considered too close to call or in recount. This is the list and my predictions as to how they will likely turn out. Asterisks indicate incumbents and bolding indicates likely winners:

CA-10- Central Valley

• Josh Harder (D)- 90,263 (50.9%)
• Jeff Denham* (R)- 86,956 (49.1%)

CA-39- Orange County

• Young Kim (R)- 87,924 (50.7%)
• Gil Cisneros (D)- 85,501 (49.3%)

CA-45- Orange County

• Mimi Walters* (R)- 107,132 (50.5%)
• Katie Porter (D)- 105,123 (49.5%)

GA-07- northeast Atlanta suburbs

• Rob Woodall* (R)- 139,837 (50.2%)
• Carolyn Bourdeaux (D)- 138,936 (49.8%)

ME-02- rural Maine

• Bruce Poliquin* (R)- 131,466 (46.2%)
• Jared Golden (D)- 129,556 (45.5%)

NJ-03- south central New Jersey

• Andy Kim (D)- 150,311 (49.9%)
• Tom MacArthur * (R)- 146,887 (48.8%)

NY-27 (recount)- western New York

• Chris Collins* (R)- 134,251 (49.5%)
• Nate McMurray (D)- 131,341 (48.4%)

TX-23- Rio Grande Valley

• Will Hurd* (R)- 102,903 (49.2%)
• Gina Ortiz Jones (D)- 101,753 (48.7%)

UT-04- Salt Lake City

• Ben McAdams (D)- 108,509 (51.2%)
• Mia Love* (R)- 103,595 (48.8%)

2016's Biggest Turkey Isn't Just Trump-- But The Whole Process

There's no way to know what Jill Stein's voters would have done had they not voted for her. Maybe they wouldn't have come to the polls at all. Maybe they would have written in Bernie or voted for Trump. Or maybe they would have voted for Hillary. In Wisconsin, if all 30,980 voters who cast ballots for Stein would have cast them for Clinton, Clinton's total would be not 1,382,210 but 1,413,190. Trump's total is 1,409,467. Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes would have gone to Clinton. In Michigan 50,700 votes went to Stein. In fantasy world, adding those vote's to Clinton's 2,268,193 puts Clinton at 2,318,893. Trump's at 2,279,805. 16 more electoral votes for Hillary. In Pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes are going to Trump because his 2,912,941 votes are 68,236 more than Hillary's 2,844,705 votes. Stein got 48,912 votes in the Keystone State-- would would give Hillary... not enough. Trump would still have won Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes... and the presidency.

Tuesday, New York published a much-discussed piece by Gabriel Sherman on the likelihood that Hillary actually won Wisconsin and possibly Michigan and Pennsylvania as well and should be President-elect now. Computer experts and election lawyers are urging Clinton to ask those states for a hand-count of the ballots, believing "they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked," wrote Sherman.

Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review-- especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call. It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College. There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.

The Clinton camp is running out of time to challenge the election. According to one of the activists, the deadline in Wisconsin to file for a recount is Friday; in Pennsylvania, it’s Monday; and Michigan is next Wednesday. Whether Clinton will call for a recount remains unclear. The academics so far have only a circumstantial case that would require not just a recount but a forensic audit of voting machines. Also complicating matters, a senior Clinton adviser said, is that the White House, focused on a smooth transfer of power, does not want Clinton to challenge the election result. Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri did not respond to a request for comment. But some Clinton allies are intent on pushing the issue. This afternoon, Huma Abedin’s sister Heba encouraged her Facebook followers to lobby the Justice Department to audit the 2016 vote. “Call the DOJ…and tell them you want the votes audited,” she wrote. “Even if it’s busy, keep calling.”

Yesterday, University of Michigan Computer Science Professor J. Alex Halderman clarified the views attributed to him by Sherman.

How might a foreign government hack America’s voting machines to change the outcome of a presidential election? Here’s one possible scenario. First, the attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers. Closer to the election, when it was clear from polling data which states would have close electoral margins, the attackers might spread malware into voting machines in some of these states, rigging the machines to shift a few percent of the vote to favor their desired candidate. This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during pre-election tests, do its dirty business during the election, then erase itself when the polls close. A skilled attacker’s work might leave no visible signs--  though the country might be surprised when results in several close states were off from pre-election polls.

Could anyone be brazen enough to try such an attack? A few years ago, I might have said that sounds like science fiction, but 2016 has seen unprecedented cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the election. This summer, attackers broke into the email system of the Democratic National Committee and, separately, into the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and leaked private messages. Attackers infiltrated the voter registration systems of two states, Illinois and Arizona, and stole voter data. And there’s evidence that hackers attempted to breach election offices in several other states.J. Alex HaldermanJ. Alex Halderman In all these cases, Federal agencies publicly asserted that senior officials in the Russian government commissioned these attacks. Russia has sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and has shown a willingness to use them to hack elections. In 2014, during the presidential election in Ukraine, attackers linked to Russia sabotaged the country’s vote-counting infrastructure and, according to published reports, Ukrainian officials succeeded only at the last minute in defusing vote-stealing malware that was primed to cause the wrong winner to be announced. Russia is not the only country with the ability to pull off such an attack on American systems--  most of the world’s military powers now have sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities.J. Alex HaldermanJ. Alex Halderman Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence --  paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.

I can imagine that a few specific counties in Michigan (like Macomb), Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida were very lightly hacked by Putin or Chevron or Mercer or the 400 pound man in his room and that Trump didn't win the electoral vote after all. WhatI can't imagine that there is any circumstance that could turn the election around at this point, since would be the spark that started a (real, shooting) civil war. (And remember who has the guns, amigos. In any case, Jill Stein is trying to collect the $2.5 million she needs to finance a recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. That seems nice of her. The money is pouring in at a shocking rate. She has the legal standing to get the recounts called. This thing never seems to end, does it? I woke up this morning and found the recount fund had gone to $2,979,458.09. Apparently people really want a recount. Just as this post was published, I looked again: $4,122,486.70! Nice goin'!

Will The New Republican Party Motto Now Be "The Party Of Sore Losers?" Jim Tedisco Meets Rick Perry

Which dittohead is the bigger clown?

Every day this week, the expanded vote count in NY-20's special election increased Democrat Scott Murphy's lead over confused reactionary Jim Tedisco and his team of professional election thieves (led by one of the architects of the Bush-Cheney Florida 2000 theft, Roger Stone). By Thursday evening Murphy's margin of victory had increased to 178 264 votes-- and Tedisco's best hope for a turnaround, Saratoga County, was all wrapped up, every vote counted and no salvation for the Secession Party.

Not that Team Tedisco thinks that should stop him. He went to the Dutchess County Supreme Court and demanded they declare him the winner. Desperate, nearly hysterical and frothing at the mouth, Tedisco is shrilly demanding that all votes, both machine and paper be recounted and re-examined-- except, of course for the hundreds of absentee votes from Democratic areas that he has challenged; those he demands stay forever unopened.

The only ballots that have not been counted are those challenged by each candidate’s lawyers, and while Tedisco’s office has said the challenges are roughly evenly split between the two camps, Columbia County lawyers for Murphy have only challenged 22 ballots, while Tedisco’s have challenged 258.

At this point Tedisco and the Republican Party know that, like Norm Coleman, he has been rejected by the voters. So the game plan is to tarnish his opponent's victory, keep him out of office for as long as possible with frivolous lawsuits and time-consuming challenges, and persuade the Republican grassroots that they're being robbed, adding to their sense of victimization and grievance, a world view-- as we saw in their teabaggery this week, in which they thrive. Meanwhile, encouraged by Rush Limbaugh's insistence that Texas' outgoing secessionist Governor is not a fringe kook, and despite being denounced by newspapers across Texas, Rick Perry senses that playing up to this sense of victimization is a good political move-- at least in terms of the Republican Party primary, a contest that polls show that he is currently losing by a landslide (56-31).

Real losers never accept defeat with grace and dignity. Life's real losers are assholes like Norm Coleman, Jim Tedsico... and Rick Perry, who, when they don't get their way, want to wreck the board for everyone else. And that's not your father's grandfather's Republican Party. I think Oklahoma, the most anti-Obama state in the Union, wants to secede too:

Franken Is No Longer "Leading"-- He Won

Al Franken is as entitled to a seat and a vote in the U.S. Senate as either Mike Johanns (R-NE) or Jim Risch (R-ID), the only two Republican freshmen. It's been obvious for months that Coleman's RNC-financed frivolous law suits and challengers were just about preventing Franken from taking his seat, not about really contesting the election. The best explanation for what the Republican Party is doing was blurted out by Michele Bachmann supporter Jim Bendtsen from Anoka County just north of Minneapolis. He told USAToday that "he's willing to forgo a senator if it means slowing President Obama's agenda. 'I'm in favor of keeping Franken out of office as long as possible,' he says. 'The more votes Obama has at the federal level, the more damage I think he's going to do to America.'" That is the definition of unadulterated Republican obstructionism as preached by the slobbering three-headed god, Rush-Ann-Glenn they've all sold their souls to.

After a trial spanning nearly three months, Norm Coleman’s attempt to reverse Al Franken’s lead in the recount of the U.S. Senate election was soundly rejected today by a three-judge panel that dismissed the Republican’s lawsuit.

The judges swept away Coleman’s argument that the election and its aftermath were fraught with systemic errors that made the results invalid.

“The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately,” the panel said in its unanimous decision.

In rejecting Coleman’s arguments, the panel said the Republican essentially asked it to ignore Minnesota election requirements and adopt a more lenient standard allowing illegal absentee ballots to be counted.

The panel also rejected Coleman’s comparison of Senate election problems to those in the 2000 presidential race in Florida.

Unlike Florida, Minnesota has statewide standards for absentee voting that are “uniform and explicit and apply in every county and city,” the panel wrote.

It's simple; the court has ruled Franken won the most votes which, in a democracy, means he won the election. The airtight 68 page opinion is adamant that the election was fair, that it did not violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and that each county's adopted ballot counting rules was proper and in accordance with state and federal laws. It's is almost shocking at how completely it slaps down Coleman's spurious claims. The judges have declared that Franken is entitled to a certificate of election.

Coleman and the GOP want to protract this as long as they can, just to make it more difficult for Obama to overcome GOP de facto filibusters on his entire agenda. He has already announced he will appeal to the state Supreme Court. Governor Tim Pawlenty has vowed to allow Minnesota to go without a second senator for as long as the Republican Party is willing to finance challenges and lawsuits. It's clear that Minnesota voters should start a recall of Pawlenty.

After a statewide recount and seven-week trial, Franken stands 312 votes ahead. Franken actually gained more votes from the election challenge than Coleman, the candidate who brought it.

The state law Coleman sued under merely required three judges to determine who got the most votes and is therefore entitled to an election certificate. That critical certificate is on hold pending appeal, and GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty has hedged when asked if he'll deliver it after the state courts are done reviewing the case.

"The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the November 4, 2008 election was conducted fairly, impartially, and accurately," the judges wrote in their unanimous opinion. "There is no evidence of a systematic problem of disenfranchisement in the state's election system, including in its absentee-balloting procedures."

Even the Republican Party propagandist embedded on MSNBC, former right-wing congressman Joe Scarborough, is telling Coleman that he lost and it's time to give up the shameful obstructionism: "Norm... you lost... It's over Norm? OK? It's over."

Wednesday's Minnesota Independent has some bad news for Coleman: most voters think he should concede. And Pawlenty better be careful; 59% of Minnesota voters say he should sign Franken’s election certificate.

UPDATE: And I Hope The GOP Isn't Planning The Same Strategy Of Disruption For Tedisco

As the counting of paper ballots continues in NY-20, Scott Murphy continues to expand his lead. The crazed and desperate Tedisco, who was forced out of his local GOP leadership job, has even challenged the absentee ballot of NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, whose elevation to the Senate is what opened the seat he and Murphy have been vying for. Gillbrand and Murphy, unlike Tedisco, live in the district.

So Who Is On The Minnesota Supreme Court?

A few days ago Senate Guru tried figuring out how the Minnesota Supreme Court might rule in the next phase of the frivolous law suit defeated Republican Norm Coleman is likely to pursue against victor Al Franken. First of all Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Justice G. Barry Anderson have recused themselves from any appeal because they both served on the statewide Canvassing Board earlier in the post-election process. Each was an appointee of a Republican governor. So the appeal would be decided on by Justices Alan C. Page, Paul H. Anderson, Helen M. Meyer, Lorie Skjerven Gildea, and Christopher  Dietzen. Senate Guru think Dietzen has the clearest partisan background. He was appointed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, apparently as a favor after Dietzen served as an attorney for Pawlenty's 2002 gubernatorial campaign.

I checked the Open Secrets record and noticed that Dietzen has donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates-- including to Norm Coleman and the RNC, which is helping to finance the law suits against Franken. Shouldn't he recuse himself too?

Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea was also appointed by Pawlenty. More interestingly, her husband, Andy, is a Republican Party employee and a well-known right-wing partisan operative. He also donated exclusively to GOP candidates, particularly to far right extremist John Kline.

Paul Anderson is also a Republican and was appointed by a Republican governor. Helen Meyer was appointed by Jesse Ventura and her donations were all to Democrats, especially to progressive icon Paul Wellstone. The fifth Justice, Alan Page wasn't appointed but elected, although, as Senate Guru points out, he's a probably Democrat. He hasn't made any campaign contributions.

The farce continues-- which is all the Republicans care about in the end. Meanwhile, on Friday, in a related matter, the Texas trial of one of Coleman's cronies and illegal campaign contributors, Nasser Kazeminy, was put on hold for another month.

With Absentee Ballots Breaking In His Favor, Murphy Has Pulled Ahead In NY-20 Congressional Race

Democrat Scott Murphy's up by 46 votes now, after 1,400 of the 6,700 absentee ballots have been counted. The Republican Party obstructionists aren't going to let a simple thing like a majority of votes stop them though. Bringing in their top election thief, they're looking to try to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as they can. The Albany Project is covering this in minute detail.

At this point, the absentees appear to be breaking significantly for Murphy. Tedisco leads by 68 votes among ballots cast on Election Day, while Murphy leads by 114 votes in the much smaller pool of absentees.

But the totals so far do not include Saratoga County-- a Tedisco stronghold that comprises more votes than any other county in the 20th congressional district. A Saratoga County official has told the Albany Times-Union that it will not report any results until its count is finished, leaving a key Tedisco-leaning county out of the early numbers.

Tedisco’s campaign said late Thursday that the totals from Saratoga County, which have not yet been added to the state Board of Elections website’s count, would have pushed the race in Tedisco’s favor by 60 votes, but that was before three Murphy-favoring counties reported more totals Friday morning.

Fired by Assembly Republicans from his leadership post, Tedisco is now more desperate than ever to grab the congressional seat. The fact that there are 70,000 more registered Republicans in the district than Democrats is making them all a little nervous. Daily Kos has a great report on how Tedisco's team is going about trying to steal the election.

[V]irtually all ballots from Democrats who fit the profile of "second home owners" are being challenged-- and if the Board does not uphold the challenge, those ballots are being set aside, unopened, subject to a formal appeal by Tedisco. That is: They cannot be opened until a judge rules on them.

This GOP strategy is going to significantly depress Murphy's vote tally in Columbia, at least temporarily.

Those unfamiliar with Columbia County may not be aware that there has been, for many years, a large second home community here-- made up overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, of Democrats from New York City. Many of these voters have been here for many years, in some cases decades. As is entirely appropriate and legal, they have cast their ballots here without incident many times before, including just a few months ago for Barack Obama.

But as I'm hearing it, the Tedisco lawyer in Columbia (sent in by John Ciampoli) came prepared to challenge pretty much anyone who was a Democrat who had their absentee sent to a "downstate" address.

UPDATE: Michael Steele Has Been Wrong On More Than Just Poor Befuddled Jim Tedisco

Just as Michael Steele was trying to persuade George Stephanopouls that he isn't a crook and convince Bill Bennett's hate talk radio audience that there is no recession which can be clearly seen by how busy the malls are ("The malls are just as packed on Saturday"), CNNMoney released a report that would embarrass Steele... if he were embarrassable.

Strip malls, neighborhood centers and regional malls are losing stores at the fastest pace in at least a decade, as a spending slump forces retailers to trim down to stay afloat, according to a real estate industry report.

The consequence for consumers: Fewer stores to shop and less product choice.

In just the first quarter of 2009, retail tenants at these centers have vacated 8.7 million square feet of commercial space, according to the latest report from New York-based real estate research firm Reis.

That number exceeds the 8.6 million square feet of retail space that was vacated in all of 2008.

Reis' report shows that store vacancy rates at malls rose 9.5% in the first quarter, outpacing the 8.9% vacancy rate registered in all of 2008, and marking the largest single-quarter jump in vacancies since Reis began publishing quarterly figures in 1999.

"These record numbers are symptomatic of the pervasive weakness that we're seeing across economic sectors," said Victor Calanog, director of research with Reis.

"Consumers are worried about their asset bases and they aren't buying things," he said. "Their home values and retirement accounts are still reeling, and consumers remain concerned about future income as job losses accelerate."

And the report goes on the predict that it will get much worse, with mall vacancies headed for historic highs until stabilization starts in 2012, after Obama has been able to dilute the catastrophic impact of decades of ideologically greed-driven Republican economic policies.


THE NY-20 RACE: TWO ADDITIONAL NOTES FROM KEN

(1) About those NYC absentee voters

The GOP singling out of possible "second home" voter registrants is more sinister than the Albany Project writer quoted here suggests, as has been reported earlier on The Albany Project. There is no question that someone with more than one residence is legally entitled to vote from any legitimate address. What the election-stealers are targeting, the theory goes, is something more particular: NYC residents who may have rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartments in the city. While it's just possible that it's somehow kosher for them to vote from their upstate address, in NYC it is pretty much an absolute requirement that a rent-regulated apartment be the tenant's primary residence. At the least, this is called into question if the tenant votes from another address.

The idea appears to be intimidation. Remember, those ballots are being segregated before opening. Speculation is that the intent is to encourage absentee voters who have NYC addresses (who may be presumed to be dangerously likely to be Democratic voters). whose rent-regulated status might be jeopardized, to try to withdraw their ballots before they're counted.

(2) About Jim Tedisco

I've written a number of times here about the extremely peculiar and dysfunctional structure of New York State government which has been essentially permanent over the last 40-plus years, in which, by common consent of the two major parties, control of the State Senate was conceded to the Republicans and the Assembly to the Democrats, with most of the real legislative power lodged in the hands of the two legislative leaders, the Senate majority leader (R) and the Assembly speaker (D). The two of them have been, along with the governor, the famous "three men in a room" who have pretty much been the state government over this period. (It's only recently, with the implosion of the state GOP, that the Republicans' grip on the Senate faltered and finally, in the 2008 election, was lost.)

The thing is, since the two legislative leaders barely tolerate input from members of their own caucus, the minority parties -- the Senate Democrats and Assembly Republicans -- have had almost literally no function during this time, and except on rare occasions can barely be said to have risen to the stature of an "opposition" party. They have been mostly reduced to the status of obstructionists (with hardly any power to obstruct anything, except on occasional special issues) or outright clowns. Now that the Democrats have taken control of the Senate, we're seeing a gruesome demonstration of what happens when a caucus with a heavy concentration of such time-servers takes on the responsibility of governing. It has been a woeful spectacle.

And the Senate Democrats were a class act by comparison with the equally useless Assembly Republicans, who tend to be the intellectual and ethical equivalent of used-car salesmen. And who is Jim Tedisco? The leader of the Assembly Republicans -- or in fact, as Howie points out above, the former leader, the caucus having declared its intent to replace him with someone even creepier from among its ranks. (And if you're looking for creepy, trust me, the NYS Assembly Republican caucus is a jim-dandy place to find it.) It may sound impressive to refer to the candidate as Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco, but in real-world terms what it breaks down to is someone who has at best put in his time in the Assembly watching government happen around him, and who in the end proved too clueless even for that cadre of clowns.

#

Time For Norm Coleman To Throw In The Towel, Take 23

Who's the bigger sore loser?

As of yesterday the official number of votes by which Al Franken is now leading sore loser Norm Coleman in the "election" to Minnesota's second Senate seat has risen to 312. That's right, after months of fighting and millions of dollars wasted in Coleman's frivolous law suit, he managed to gain 111 votes-- while Franken gained 198 votes, a net positive of 87 for Franken.

Of course none of this matters one bit to the Republican obstructionists behind Coleman's battle-- primarily McConnell, Kyl and Cornyn. They know that Coleman has no chance to win. They just want to delay-- for as long as possible-- Franken being seated. And there are plenty of grassroots Republicans-- those without functioning brains beyond being able to repeat what they hear from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and the other GOP strategists. Take Michele Bachmann supporter Jim Bendtsen in Anoka County, just north of the Twin Cities. Bendtsen, 54, was quoted in USAToday yesterday regurgitating just what he hears from Limbaugh. He says "he's willing to forgo a senator if it means slowing President Obama's agenda. 'I'm in favor of keeping Franken out of office as long as possible,' he says. 'The more votes Obama has at the federal level, the more damage I think he's going to do to America.'"

And for all those who would prefer to see America fail than watch Obama succeed, that kind of talk is pretty standard. Yesterday Franken's attorney explained that it's all over for Coleman but Republican obstructionists don't care about Coleman or Minnesota-- just advancing their cause: obstruction. These are the people who really believe in "4 more years."

“I think we are done,” Franken attorney Marc Elias told reporters after the counting. “It’s no more complicated than this … More Minnesotans voted for Al Franken than for Norm Coleman.”

Asked about Coleman’s pledge to battle on, Elias said, “I don’t think there is much of a case on appeal, candidly.”

Even Republican-oriented newspapers and far right extremists are starting to give up on Coleman's counterproductive tactics. Ramesh Ponnuru in the National Review: "I think it's time for him to give up this fight." Today however, eyes shift east as official absentee vote counting gets under way in the contested election for Congress in NY-20. It's all tied-up now but Nate Silver says the trend is Murphy's friend in this case. He explains that there seems "to be a relatively higher proportion of absentee ballots returned in counties where Murphy performed well on election night. For example, Columbia County, where Murphy won 56.3 percent of the of the vote last week, accounted for 9.8 percent of ballots on election night, but accounts for 15.3 percent of absentees. Conversely, Saratoga County, which is a Tedisco stronghold, represented 36 percent of ballots on election night but only 27.2 percent of absentees."


UPDATE: GOP Still Obstructing Minnesota Senate Resolution

Today's NY Times mentions, despite partisan fanatics like Mr. Bendtsen, that Minnesota really does need two senators, just like everyone else.

“I keep hoping that it will end,” Ms. Klobuchar, a Democrat elected in 2006 to her first term, said this week, adding that her biggest concern is a doubling of requests from ordinary constituents in need of help-- with a missing Social Security check, say, a stalled adoption in Guatemala, or a tangled problem with veterans’ benefits.

“The system,” she said, “was set up for two senators for a reason.”

...A political scientist at the University of Minnesota, Lawrence R. Jacobs, said that given the deluge of requests for help from those losing jobs, homes, everything, Ms. Klobuchar was “a little like the Dutch boy trying to plug the dike.”

End of The Line For Ex-Senator Coleman?

Don't let the door hit you on your way out-- and best of luck in your next endeavors

Everyone is wondering if it isn't too late for ex-Senator Norm Coleman to swoop in and claim the RNC Chair in the midst of a vicious, raucous bloodletting between beleaguered conservatives and surging neo-Nazis. Earlier today, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected Coleman's desperate bid to overturn the Minnesota senate election.

The ruling this morning appears to clear the way for the State Canvassing Board this afternoon to certify results of the Senate election recount, presumably with Democrat Al Franken on top. Franken holds an unofficial 225-vote lead.

According to this afternoon's Fix in the Washington Post, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page wrote that Coleman's attempt to include 654 rejected absentees from GOP strongholds "did not meet the criteria for counting ballots laid out in a previous ruling, specifically that both sides had to agree for any additional ballots to be counted."

Coleman's options are dwindling. With today's Court ruling, the incumbent must now put all of his hopes on an election challenge.

That challenge is likely to have three main prongs: that the 654 absentee ballots have been wrongly excluded, that roughly 150 ballots have been double-counted, and that 130 ballots that disappeared from a church between election night Nov. 4 and the manual recount should not be included in the final tally.

Democrats insist that even if all three of those challenges are resolved in Coleman's favor, he still does not have the votes to make up his current deficit.

"The state canvassing board is set to certify Al Franken the Senator-Elect from Minnesota, and it's time for the Republican Party to face the facts: Al Franken won this election," said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee communications director Matt Miller.

Coleman has been threatening to file a lawsuit-- Republicans hate lawsuits except for themselves-- if the board certifies Franken, which it did at 2:36 pm. An election certificate could not be issued for Franken's victory until the legal action was resolved. It's ironic that when Coleman declared victory in November he put on his best straight face and asked that we all join hands and working on a much needed "healing process," suggesting that Franken be a mensch and just accept his loss like a man. "If I were trailing, I would step back," said the hypocritical Coleman. He has no realistic chance of being seated himself but he will make sure that Minnesota doesn't have a second senator for as long as he can.

Schumer gets it right:

Coleman Going Down Real Ugly As Al Franken Wins Minnesota Senate Race

Minnesota's sleazy ex-Senator Norm Coleman

Some say that had Karl Rove not arranged for a tragic airplane "accident" in 2002, Norm Coleman would never have been a U.S. senator. Whether you believe that or not, if you've followed Coleman's Senate career you'll probably agree that one term was more than enough for this sleazy and ethically-challenged political hack. (I followed his career, earlier than most. In elementary school-- Brooklyn's PS 197-- we were co-secretaries of our class. He was a dirt-bag back then too.)

As Al Franken's lead has continued to grow, Coleman's desperation to keep his job has been reduced to a series of law suits and delaying tactics-- always the least classy act in any town. Ex-Senator Coleman, whose term expired yesterday, is using several maneuvers to try to hold back what looks inevitable-- the end of his disgraceful political career.

The latest vote count shows Franken with a 225 vote lead, with Coleman alternately demanding batches of votes be not counted or counted, depending on his cynical and narrow partisan strategies of the moment. Today's StarTribune doesn't hold out much hope for Coleman and explains that Franken has continued racking up a wider margin as more votes are counted.

At least two things, however, still stand in the way of Franken becoming Minnesota's newest U.S. senator: the possibility of a ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court that more wrongly rejected absentee ballots should be counted, and a legal contest that Coleman attorneys all but promised should Franken prevail.

...After the counting, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said he was satisfied that the recount results were as accurate as they could be, given human limitations, the scope of state law and Supreme Court directives.

...With the recount complete, focus immediately shifted to the Supreme Court, which continued to consider a request from the Coleman campaign to alter the process and add more absentee ballots to be reconsidered. But there was no word Saturday from the state's highest court as to when it would rule or hear arguments.

The state Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet Monday (and Tuesday, if necessary) to review the tally of the previously rejected ballots, then certify the final result.

Under state law, an election certificate formally naming a winner cannot be issued until all legal disputes are resolved.

The Franken campaign, Ritchie and various county officials filed responses with the Supreme Court on Saturday morning. Franken, Ritchie and Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman all argued forcefully against the Coleman petition. They said the process for identifying wrongly rejected absentee ballots had worked as intended and should be completed.

Saturday Night Musing: Minnesota

WHOOOO COULD IMAGINE?
 
By NOAH

Back in my long, dearly departed youth, there was a song by Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention, that contained an extended dada-ist section featuring the words "Who could imagine (pause) that they would freakout (another pause) in Minnesota. The word 'who' was extensively drawn out while the words 'imagine' and 'Minnesota' received a kind of menacingly derisive emphasis. Now, on a night 42 years later, I am compelled by events to imagine the citizens of a state, where the pro football team wears purple yet calls themselves Vikings, freaking out big time. Forget about what real Vikings would do to anyone caught wearing purple, let alone do to a little guy in a loincloth singing about purple rain... what are Minnesotans going to do with each other when the voting in the Franken-Coleman Senate race is finally decided.

As I write this tonight, the Franken camp is claiming it is up by a mere 4 votes! This recount started out as a statistical tie. Now, by the Franken camp's figuring, it's down to 4 votes. Coleman's camp has come up with a figure that puts them a few hundred votes ahead, but that's more of a PR move designed around a desire to manipulate the public perception of who was always ahead and therefore is probably the winner. That kind of thing always makes it harder for the other guy to claim victory. The difference in the figures of the two camps centers around challenged votes which may or may not be resolved. The recount was supposed to be over by now, but things may be grinding to a stalemate, a stalemate which may end up in the U.S. Senate. So, what should they do in the land of 10,000 lakes and 10 to the 10th trillion power mosquitoes? Flip a coin? Draw straws?
 
Other possible solutions:

1. Poker game?
2. Run off?
3. Wrestling match?
4. Hot dog eating contest?
 
Personally, I kinda like #3. Tickets could be sold to raise money to repair that bridge that collapsed due to lack of tax revenue or to raise money for the education of children affected by the collapse. Also, I like the absurdity of the spectacle. Well, what are we supposed to expect from a state that elected a wrestler, Jesse Ventura, as its Governor. But, the whole thing will come down to who has the cleverest legal team and who can pocket the most ballots. Now if only there were a way to figure the number of people who stayed home because they thought their vote wouldn't count and if they were right or not.

Category Five Electoral Storm in Palm Beach County

When most people think about Florida politics, especially Palm Beach County politics, they think of corrupted elections. It was Palm Beach County's butterfly ballots that gave Bush the opportunity to steal the 2000 election. But the electoral rot there didn't end in 2000 and it Al Gore is far from the only victim. A close friend of DWT who practices law in south Florida and would prefer to remain anonymous for reasons that will soon become obvious, sent this report along today:


With all of the big news, no one seems to have noticed an increasingly scandalous judicial election in Palm Beach County. The longer I've waited to publicize it, the more the plot has thickened. At this point, so many things have happened so quickly, bringing in parties and organizations that have both personal and national implications, that its all I can do to scratch the surface. As for the national implications, suffice it to say we should all pray that Obama has already reached 270 before the Palm Beach County results are tabulated. 
 
On August 26th, Palm Beach County conducted a local election. At stake were a few Congressional primaries, three spirited judicial races (offices which are usually uncontested), a three way race to elect the new State Attorney, and other local offices. One race of particular interest to me was between the incumbent Circuit Court judge, Richard Wennet, and the challenger, Bill Abramson.
 
Each candidate is notorious in the Palm Beach County criminal defense bar and bench. Judge Wennet has served on the bench for 24 years.He is widely considered to be the meanest, most callous judge in Palm Beach County. He virtually always sentences everyone to the statutory maximum, regardless of the individual circumstances of the case. He routinely rules against the defendant and for the state, with virtually no consideration of the law or arguments, and his rulings are reversed more often than any other trial judge in Florida. Most judges do not like to be reversed. Judge Wennet does not seem to care.
 
Bill Abramson has been a private criminal defense attorney in Palm Beach County for many years.  He is known for acting out in court, and has been banned from several courtrooms. His courtroom antics are generally frowned upon by other criminal defense lawyers, but, many of us would find him preferable to Judge Wennet, (and the anarchist in me would love to see everyone squirm when they're forced to give him the respect due to a judge).
 
Those are the candidates. Now, the juicy back-story. In 2005, Mr. Abramson was conducting a trial in front of Judge Wennet. He filed a pre-trial motion which may have disposed of the case without a trial. Judge Wennet refused to hear the motion, and began interviewing potential jurors. Mr. Abramson would not stand for this, continuing to interrupt the judge as he attempted to go through the preliminary jury questionnaire. Judge Wennet ultimately filed a bar complaint against Mr. Abramson, and Mr. Abramson filed ethics complaints against the judge. More on this later…

But let's fast forward to Judge Wennet's macaca moment which occurred in 2007. From the Palm Beach Post: 

Wennet was secretly videotaped last year on Peanut Island by a woman on probation whom he once dated. On the videotape, posted on YouTube, the judge apparently was looking at a topless sunbather and commented on her "breasticles."

Julie Ann Domotor was arrested for illegally videotaping Wennet and violating her probation. She spent 83 days in jail before agreeing to a plea deal. Among the lawyers who represented her: Abramson.

This year, the ongoing feud continued when Mr. Abramson filed to run against Judge Wennet.  Although Judge Wennet received endorsements from most of the high-profile Palm Beach County lawyers, Abramson received some endorsements, raised some money, and turned it into a very, very close race. Closer than Bush-Gore in Palm Beach County. But, that's okay. Palm Beach County has had 8 years to get its act together, right?
 
On August 26th, after the initial tabulation, Abramson had beaten Wennet by 17 votes out of over 102,000 cast. This triggered an automatic recount, which concluded on Labor Day. The results of the recount put Wennet ahead by 60 votes. But there were missing ballots. Lots of them.  Three thousand four hundred seventy-eight of them.
 
September 4th, 2008: election officials announced that they had found 2700 of the missing ballots. Shortly, confounding everyone, again, they announced that only 957 ballots had been found. How they made this mistake is even more confusing than how they could have lost the ballots to begin with. See: 
 
September 5th, 2008: the County Election Canvassing Board finally gave up when a third count produced a still different result and tally. Meanwhile, the state canvassing board, chaired by Gov. Charlie Crist, refused to certify the election along with all of the others. Both candidates pledged to sue if the other was declared the winner. See: 
 
September 8th, 2008: Mr. Abramson filed suit before Leon County Circuit Judge Charles Francis, seeking to have the results of the recount thrown out. Judge Wennet, in keeping with his style, decided to bypass the judiciary system and go straight to the executive. He asked Gov. Crist to allow a re-vote on the November 4th election. Gov. Crist quickly said no. 
 
September 12th, 2008: A three-day audit revealed 102,772 ballots-- 249 more than originally counted. Just as county workers were reconciling the numbers, closing the margin to 66, Judge Francis ordered that no one be allowed to touch any ballots. Until the Judge lifts the seal, the tabulation center is being guarded by police. One concern was that the continued handling of the ballots would make it difficult for a machine to read them later. 
 
So… what was the problem to begin with? It would appear that there was no foul play in answering yet another question of "are they corrupt of just incompetent?"

The process for recovering the ballots was time-consuming and complex, Merriman said.

It quickly became apparent that the problem was caused by a collosal organizational failure, said Commissioner Mary McCarty. The ballots, which should be segregated by precinct, got mixed together and workers were unable to keep track of which boxes had already been run through high-speed machines during the recount and which hadn't.

McCarty said Merriman's team discovered at least six boxes of ballots that hadn't been run through the machines during the recount.

But the plot thickens even more… remember that old bar complaint? The one from 2005? The one that started this whole feud? Well, funny story… it still has not been resolved. And, guess what?  On Monday, "in an unusual move," The Florida Bar is asking the state Supreme Court to ignore the referee's recommendation, and instead suspend Mr. Abramson's license for 91 days. 
 
Unusual indeed. Unusual and suspect. The Florida Bar Association's "referee," Thomas Lynch, had listened to five days of testimony regarding the incident, finding fault with both parties. Specifically, he found that Mr. Abramson should have followed the Judge's orders to sit down and be quiet, and that he should not have made disparaging remarks about the Judge to the jury panel. This referee had initially determined, however, that Mr. Abramson's conduct did not rise to a level requiring disbarment, or even a license suspension. He recommended a public reprimand-- essentially a mark on his record that could have implications for future jobs, clients, or bar complaints. One reason for his recommendation was that Mr. Abramson had been motivated by a desire to zealously advocate for his client, not pad his wallet. Normally, the Florida Bar accepts the recommendations of the referees in such matters, and sanctions accordingly.
 
What in the world might make Mr. Abramson's case different? It couldn't be the ongoing election dispute? Or that many of Wennet's contributors sit on the Florida Bar's Board of Governors. Or that the President of the Florida Bar Association, John White, is a partner at Gerald Richman's, the firm representing Judge Wennet. Can we say conflict of interest? Sure. But for Judge Wennet, who has rarely attempted to hide his pro-state, anti-defendant bias, I suppose its business as usual. 
 
What, you ask, would be the electoral consequences of such an action by the Florida Bar? A very good question. If Abramson were declared the winner of the election, and his license were revoked prior to his taking office in January, no one seems to know what happens. If the Supreme Court does not rule, then no action could be taken against him until after he leaves the bench. But interestingly…

The time period-- 91 rather than 90 days-- would force Abramson to take the added step of applying for reinstatement, proving that he has been rehabilitated, said attorney Kenneth Marvin, who is representing the Bar in its action against the 41-year-old who specializes in traffic cases.

If Abramson does not adequately prove that he has learned from his mistakes, another hearing would be held, delaying his reinstatement for another six to nine months, Marvin said.

"It's tough. It's tough," Marvin said of the process for reinstatement.

This is where it stands now. Forty-seven days from November 4th. Here's hoping this was a good test run to break in the new Sequoia machines-- one which everyone has learned from. Including the Obama campaign-- which should monitor every precinct in Palm Beach County, and prepare for the worst.

"Recount" does remind us of the orgy of evil that was unleashed by the 2000 election outcome. But is there really anyone who's forgotten about that?

Yes, there's a real Ron Klain, seen here at right with Kevin
Spacey, who plays him in Recount. There's a conversation
between them on HBO's website, which has many such
features that look more interesting than the film itself.

It was a strange feeling sort-of-watching HBO Films' Recount, a recounting of the 2000 Florida presidential election recount drama, last night.

I only sort-of-watched because, to begin with, I had forgotten about it until Howie mentioned it while we were talking, which turned out to be about 50 minutes into the thing. So then I set the DVR to record the 1am (ET) replay, but I also sort-of-watched the rest of the 9pm showing. And then this morning I watched some of the beginning.

Of course it's not difficult to get into the plot, whose outlines remain all too familiar even after all these years. At the same time, there's always that problem when you're watching a fictionalized version of real events--and you have to assume it's fictionalized when the re-creation is being presented as anything other than a documentary--the problem being that you never quite know what's God's-honest-truth and what isn't. (Howie suggests that this is like watching CNN. I can't argue.)

So you watch, sort of mentally checking stuff off: oh yeah, the Palm Beach ballot, and the Crazy Woman (I'd just as soon not mention her name) playing fast and loose with election law, essentially making it up as she goes, and the respectable-looking gangs of thugs sent by the GOP recount command to intimidate the Miami-Dade County recount, and on and on.

You get a sort of different response when there's a character or detail you don't remember. Did this or something like it really happen? For example, with Kevin Spacey clearly cast as the star of the show, you sort of figure there must have been a Ron Klain, who had been Vice President Al Gore's chief of staff until he was forced out by the machinations of later-to-be-ousted-himself campaign director Tony Coelho, at which point Ron was brought back into the campaign in a humiliatingly lower position, and wound up being the Democratic point man on the recount. They wouldn't have made that all up. Would they?

As the thing unreels, you never quite figure out what the point of the exercise is, except maybe for people who are truly unfamiliar with these events, or want to test their recollection/understanding of them -- or perhaps to remind us of the evil that was to follow, the reign of terror that was ultimately unleashed by our very own election-fixing Supreme Court.

I guess what leaves me most uneasy is that the film stirs all this stuff up without giving us a clue as to what we're supposed to do with/about it all.

It should go without saying that in the very act of casting you're slanting the material, and by and large the process tends to favor the Republicans, at least when the process is controlled by people who are trying to be fair (in other words, not to be confused with, for example, ABC's patented far-right-wing faux-docu-hatchet-job unit), if only because casting basically normal people tends to whack off the extremities of a pack of vicious, slimy characters.

Laura Dern, for example, is an interesting choice for Krazy Katherine (oops, I let part of her name slip). As an out-there actress, she's willing to give us an intimation of not-too-brightness and even of not-too-saneness, but she still manages to suggest that this is, on balance, a more or less balanced individual. Of course the editorial decision not to have the makeup crew do even a partial let alone a full Katherine on the handsome Ms. Dern also unbalances the portrait in the direction of nonexistent balance.

Or there's the casting of the almost always interesting Tom Wilkinson as Jim Baker, the GOP jack-of-all-trades-slash-enforcer (and bosom buddy of the Republican presidential candidate's Poppy) sent in to do whatever had to be done to save Florida, and the election, for the party. At this point Wilkinson has Americanized himself so successfully that he didn't even need the vaguely Texan twang to hide his English origins. I suspect that most viewers had no idea that he is English. But we inveterate watchers of British TV on public television and cable know him as one of his home country's busiest actors, with a fascinating ability to create characters who seem to be likable except for a certain something that you can't dismiss (and that usually turns out to conceal serious personality disorders). I couldn't help thinking that Wilkinson's performance lent the wily Baker more dignity than he deserves.

In the end, I was mostly reminded of the basic truth about a difference between the major parties in modern U.S. history: Where Democrats often (not always, but often) attempt to get to the truth of a factual issue, Republicans (pretty much always) just want to win. Oh, Recount shows us plenty of Republicans who seem sincerely to believe that it's the Democrats who are trying to steal the election, but it seems clearly that they're either ideologically blinkered or just not very bright.

At one point, Spacey's Ron Klain laments that he just wants to find out who really won Florida. Of course we have no way of knowing whether such a person ever thought or said such a thing, but it's also quite clear that no such thing could ever have been thought or said by anyone on the GOP side.

No doubt the less ingenuous of those GOP-ers justify their unconcern-bordering-on-contempt for truth with reference to their possession of a "higher" truth that seems to be the birthright of the modern Loony Right, a delusion most fully incarnated in the otherwise-bewildering person of "Big Dick" Cheney, a man who has probably unleashed and enforced more lies than any individual on record, all of it presumably justified by his unshakable belief in the demented nerve firings ricocheting around his corroded brain.

In this regard, the pragmatic Jim Baker does stand apart from the modern-day GOP elite--he's of that older generation of Republicans personified by his pal George H. W. Bush, so resolutely repudiated by George W. And in this regard, it was probably sensible to put as interesting actor as Tom Wilkinson in the part. My quibble is that Wilkinson is probably too interesting an actor, and winds up lending the character more dimension than I suspect he in fact has.

I'm curious as to how other people have reacted to Reunion. As suggested, I found myself focusing most on the long-term effect of where we know the story is headed, and maybe that is the idea. When, at the end, after the Supreme Court has played fairy godmother to W., the poor sincere, stoogelike Republican counsel played by Bob Balaban (a famous liberal, isn't he?), blithers at the end that the shame of Bill Clinton is about to be erased, can the intended effect be anything but ironic?

We know all too well that what the Court election-fixers in fact unleashed on the country was a regime that, heedless of the thinness of its "victory," was about to unleash an assault on reason, decency, international comity, democracy, and honest government -- all wrapped in a mantle of near-sociopathic ineptitude -- without precedent in U.S. history.

The only thing is, is there anyone out there who had somehow managed to forget this lesson?

#

IL-14-- IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL IT'S OVER

It looks like there will definitely be a recount in the super-close race for the Democratic primary for the general election in the northern Illinois district abandoned by Denny Hastert. 355 votes separate grassroots progressive John Laesch and Blue Dog multimillionaire Bill Foster out of 75,000 votes cast-- less than one vote per precinct. A significant number of provisional and absentee ballots remain uncounted. This race is way too close to call. Watch John's press conference: