Polinaut: December 31, 2008 Archive

Daily Digest: 12-31-08

Posted at 10:12 AM on December 31, 2008 by Molly Bloom
Filed under: Daily Digest

Democrat Al Franken is now 49 votes ahead in the recount with wrongly-rejected absentee ballots still to be counted. MPR, AP, NY Times, CNN, Star Tribune and PiPress have stories.

Republican Norm Coleman's lawyers call the lead "artificial."

An election judge in Duluth is surprised to learn her absentee ballot was rejected.

State Government

Some at the Legislature see the nearly $6 billion budget deficit as an opportunity for reform.

Rochester schools and the University worry about their budgets.

Two reports argue for more education funding.

All of this snow has been financially taxing.

But the Minnesota Zoo and Austin Public Schools are doing just fine.

Congress

Critics urge Sen. Amy Klobuchar to condemn the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Rep. Keith Ellison appeals to credit card companies to not raise rates in his role as co-chair of the Consumer Justice Caucus.

MN's 3rd District Congressional race is picked as one of this year's top five races by WaPo's The Fix.

And Congressional Democrats say they will block Gov. Rod Blagojevich's pick to replace President-elect Obama in the Senate. But they may not be able to.

And...

Happy New Year! See you in 2009...

Coleman campaign wants changes in absentee ballot process

Posted at 2:39 PM on December 31, 2008 by Mike Mulcahy (5 Comments)
Filed under: Recount

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign sent a letter today to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's office and Democrat Al Franken's campaign ripping the process currently underway to identify wrongly rejected absentee ballots. Coleman attorney Tony Trimble writes the process is not working and will result in "an invalid and unreliable election result" unless it's changed.

The Coleman campaign originally asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to prevent the inclusion of improperly rejected absentee ballots in the recount or to set up a uniform standard to identify them.

The court ordered the campaigns and secretary of state's office to work with local elections officials to identify the ballots.

Trimble says in his letter that the process has broken down, and that "confusing and inconsistent directives and demands have confounded our county/city election officials."

He then proposes a plan to fix it:

...we propose that: the envelopes and supporting materials for any and all absentee ballots identified by the Franken campaign, the Coleman campaign, the Secretary of State and the county and local election officials be sent to the Secretary of State's office by Friday. At that time, the campaigns and the Secretary of State will review the materials and determine pursuant to the Supreme Court's order which absentee ballots were indeed wrongly rejected. Those ballots will then be counted by the Canvassing Board at its scheduled meeting

The board is scheduled to count the ballots on Saturday and then deal with any further challenges Monday and possibly Tuesday. At that point the recount would in theory be over.

No response yet to the letter from the Franken campaign or Mark Ritchie's office.

Comment on this post