Contested Ballots in the Minnesota Senate Race

[Perknose]

The Ballot Challenge: This site has 2,633 of the actual challenged ballots up so YOU can decide for yourself, with more of 6,655 contested ballots to be put up as they are released.

Transparency taken to a new level, imho. :thumbsup:

 

[ViRGE]

Most of these are fine, I'm not sure why they're being contested.

1) http://senaterecount.startribu..._challengedballot5.png
2) http://senaterecount.startribu..._challengedballot1.png

Edit: Alright, I found the reasons on the full PDF scans.

1) Fraken challenges, "Not Barkley, Is Franken". Not valid, is bullshit.
2) Fraken challenges, "No dup". I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

 

[Vette73]

Yea I am not sure why most of these were challenged. I am pulling for Franken but it seems both sides have challenged ballots where the voter?s intent is pretty easy to tell.

1 was the person only filled in 1/3 of the circle and it was challenged. The problem is they only filled in that amount on their other selections. So its easy to see what their intent was. My understanding is when a ballot is challenged you look for the voters intent.

So far from what I see, about 25 or so I have looked at, this should not take a level headed person long to count.

 

[alchemize]

Wow. I looked at a few and not a single one was unclear. Take them both out back and shoot them and put up two new candidates.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: alchemize
Wow. I looked at a few and not a single one was unclear. Take them both out back and shoot them and put up two new candidates.

Well some get a weirder after the first 15 or so.

Like 1 for Coleman where the person only filled in 1/3 the circle. So I gave that to him. But then there was one for Franken where the person went over the circle. So I gave that to him.

Then there were the ones where the person had a absient ballot and just wrote in "republican" for a name. I gave that to no one as you vote for a person, not party. Or the person voted for Franken and Barkley. So no one got that one, even though it seems they wanted someone other then coleman and in the end they hurt their vote more then helped.


Like this is a dumb one...

http://senaterecount.startribu...ngedballot1coleman.pdf

Coleman challanged this one and said the person voted for coleman. I don't see ANY mark for ANY person. Now that reaching.

 

[Lemon law]

I may not be exactly on target here, but many other ballots being contested, not because the intent of the voter is unclear, but because the chain of custody is unclear. Absentee ballots that came in unsealed envelopes, ballots not properly signed, and with a margin this close, both sides are pulling out all the stops to get their opponents votes disqualified.

And while I agree with the Marlin1975 comment of , "So far from what I see, about 25 or so I have looked at, this should not take a level headed person long to count."

Sadly, like Diogenes looking for an honest man, they are hard commodities to find, and instead this will end up in a court of law regardless if the Minnesota Canvassing Board makes a ruling or not regarding disputed ballots.

 

[Skitzer]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
I may not be exactly on target here, but many other ballots being contested, not because the intent of the voter is unclear, but because the chain of custody is unclear. Absentee ballots that came in unsealed envelopes, ballots not properly signed, and with a margin this close, both sides are pulling out all the stops to get their opponents votes disqualified.

And while I agree with the Marlin1975 comment of , "So far from what I see, about 25 or so I have looked at, this should not take a level headed person long to count."

Sadly, like Diogenes looking for an honest man, they are hard commodities to find, and instead this will end up in a court of law regardless if the Minnesota Canvassing Board makes a ruling or not regarding disputed ballots.

Ultimately I think this will end up in the Senate and Franken will be chosen.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Perknose

Transparency taken to a new level, imho. :thumbsup:

:thumbsup: for giving the public a chance to evaluate those ruling on the challenges.

I only went through about ten of them. Most of those were pretty clear. I saw a double entry for the same office that obviously should be disqualified.

The most obvious thing about them is how ridiculous some of the challenges are.

 

[Robor]

We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Harvey

Originally posted by: Perknose

Transparency taken to a new level, imho. :thumbsup:

:thumbsup: for giving the public a chance to evaluate those ruling on the challenges.

I only went through about ten of them. Most of those were pretty clear. I saw a double entry for the same office that obviously should be disqualified.

The most obvious thing about them is how ridiculous some of the challenges are.

Yeah, this is great.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

Well some had people put X's over the box. If they did that for 1 person and the X was solid in the circle, I gave that vote to the person they choose. But 1 person circled the persons name. I can see intent, but they did not even get close to the circle as it says on top. So I gave no one a vote on that.

So someone else may say the circle name was intent and was enough. So there are some that could go either way, maybe. But i think the majority are easy. But when this may come down to less then 100 votes, the one i said throw out may be worth a lot and which ever side it hurts will challange it.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

Because idiots will be idiots.

 

[OCGuy]

Franken is such a worthless piece of shit.

 

[Skitzer]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
Franken is such a worthless piece of shit.

Tell us how you really feel LOL

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Franken is such a worthless piece of shit.

Please tell us exactly what your worthless, unsupported opinion has to do with the integrity of the recount.

And that aside, he's a lot funnier than you. :laugh:

 

[winnar111]

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

They can. Fill out the ballot completely, properly, without any stray marks, or get lost.

Works on the SATs.

Then again, its a good thing Palm Beach dumbass Gore voters were too stupid to fill out the ballot properly.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: winnar111

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

They can. Fill out the ballot completely, properly, without any stray marks, or get lost.

Works on the SATs.

Then again, its a good thing Palm Beach dumbass Gore voters were too stupid to fill out the ballot properly.

Voting is (perhaps unfortunately) not a test of intelligence. It's amazing how dumb some people are to fill out their ballots the way they did, but I'd say 80%+ of the contested ballots are really obvious and I'm not sure why they were contested or miscounted in the first place. Of the other 20%, the majority are still pretty clear, like when there's a small dot in one blank and then another blank filled out completely, where the person obviously started filling in one oval and then stopped when they saw they were filling in the wrong one. I voted on about 130 of the ballots and there were only a few that should obviously be thrown out, like when they clearly voted for two people. Several people used an X or check mark instead of filling out the oval, and some used both (where they probably put the mark first and then realized their mistake and went back and filled in the ovals).

I liked the one where both Coleman's and Franken's ovals were filled out, with a big X through Coleman's, and then the guy wrote right on his ballot, "I really do want to vote for Franken."

 

[Lemon law]

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is an old saying in statistics, figures do not lie but liars figure. There always exists a way to say white is black as George Orwell and others point out.

But regardless if you think Coleman or Franken are worthless, the person who emerges
the victor in this initial recount, will have a big leg up. And bottom line, by a mere 87 votes, it may be Franken.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: Lemon law

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is an old saying in statistics, figures do not lie but liars figure. There always exists a way to say white is black as George Orwell and others point out.

But regardless if you think Coleman or Franken are worthless, the person who emerges
the victor in this initial recount, will have a big leg up. And bottom line, by a mere 87 votes, it may be Franken.

There's another saying.

As soon as you make something idiot-proof, they make a better idiot

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: winnar111

Originally posted by: Robor
We went through this crap in FL over butterfly ballots and hanging chads. FFS why can't they make an election system that's idiot proof?

Yes, I know the answer. Just saying...

They can. Fill out the ballot completely, properly, without any stray marks, or get lost.

Works on the SATs.

Then again, its a good thing Palm Beach dumbass Gore voters were too stupid to fill out the ballot properly.

Only you would put 8 years of confirmed disaster above 8 years of unknown.