Republican incumbent Norm Coleman slightly extended his lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken in Minnesota’s undecided Senate race, as state election officials on Wednesday night concluded Day 7 of a hand recount of nearly 3 million votes.

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The plot continues to thicken in the undecided Minnesota Senate contest, now entering the second week of a legally mandated recount with Republican incumbent Norm Coleman maintaining a razor-thin lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken.

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In a blow to Democrat Al Franken, a state board ruled Wednesday that absentee ballots that were rejected by poll workers won’t be included in Minnesota’s Senate recount.

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With just a fifth of the state’s precincts left to go in Minnesota’s Senate recount, supporters of Al Franken and Norm Coleman remain in the hunt for ballots that could tip the balance to their candidate.

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Nate Silver:

According to data just released by the Minnesota Secretary of State, Al Franken has gained a net of 43 votes on the first day of that state’s recount process. Norm Coleman had a lead of 215 voters over Franken in Minnesota’s certified, pre-recount tally; that margin is now 172 votes.

Minnesota reports that it has thus far re-counted 15.49 percent of its ballots. If the first day’s results are indicative of the pace that the candidates will maintain throughout the recount process, Franken would gain a net of 278 votes over Colmean, giving him a narrow victory. For any number of reasons, however, the results reported thus far may not be indicative of future trends [...]

the precincts that were re-counted today were slightly redder than average, having favored Coleman by an aggregate of 3.3 points during the initial count. No votes have yet been re-counted in Minneapolis (out of more than 200,000 cast), although about 43,000 have been recounted in St. Paul (out of around 140,000 cast on Election Day). Another city which has not yet reported any results is Duluth, traditionally a Democratic stronghold.

Then there’s the matter of the challenged ballots:

Challenges can occur to ballots that had previously been deemed to be legal, in which case those votes will be deducted from the opponent’s total. Coleman has thus far challenged 115 ballots and Franken 106. However, based on local reports, many or perhaps most of the challenges are frivolous, and are unlikely to be upheld upon review. Thus, the candidate who has challenged fewer ballots probably stands to gain ground once such challenges are adjudicated.

Some of these may be frivolous, but some not so much. Follow the link for pictures of various challenged ballots, and take the quiz courtesy of Minnesota public radio.

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During the November 19 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski noted
that “Alaska’s [Sen.] Ted Stevens [R] has lost to Anchorage mayor
Mark Begich [D], whose win moves Senate Democrats within two seats of a
filibuster-proof majority.” Host Joe Scarborough then stated: “All
right. So, again, recapping: if Al Franken can steal enough votes in Minnesota, that’s
get — that gets Democrats to 59″ Senate seats. Minnesota officials have begun a recount of the
state’s 2.9 million total votes cast after an initial count found
incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman leading by 215 votes. Earlier, Scarborough
stated: “So, with Stevens losing, Democrats have 58 [senators and
Senator-elects]. They’ve got this run-off in Georgia, which could get them to
59. … If Al Franken steals enough votes in Minnesota, they get to 60. I’m not
saying he stole any votes, I’m just saying, as a Republican from Florida, I mean,
it’s a close race. Steal some votes, you get over the top.”
Brzezinski stated: “They’re gonna find them in the trunk of a
car,” an apparent reference to the widely discredited rumor
that 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis
were mishandled.

As Media
Matters for America has repeatedly documented, Minnesota
Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has repeatedly said there is no actual evidence of
fraud in the vote count of the
state’s Senate race.

As Media
Matters also noted,
Fritz Knaak, a lawyer for Coleman, reportedly said on November 8, “We were actually told [ballots]
had been riding around in [Minneapolis
elections director Cynthia Reichert's] car for several days, which raised all
kinds of integrity questions.” But the Associated Press reported
that same day that Knaak “said a Minneapolis
attorney reassured Coleman’s campaign that no one but an elected official had
access to the 32 ballots and there was no tampering.” On November 10,
Knaak further reportedly said
of the purported incident, “It does not appear that there was any
ballot-tampering, and that was our concern.” Additionally, state officials have refuted rumors
that the ballots were handled improperly, and Pawlenty — who initially forwarded
the car ballot rumor himself — has stated that “[t]here’s a news report in Minnesota that
the ballot-in-the-trunk story has now been retracted, that it wasn’t
accurate.”

From the November 19 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: So, with Stevens losing –

BRZEZINSKI: Yes.

SCARBOROUGH: — Democrats have 58.

BRZEZINSKI: Hmm-mm.

SCARBOROUGH: They’ve got this run-off in Georgia, which could get them to 59. And then if Al Franken - yeah.

BRZEZINSKI: Franken, yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: If Al Franken steals enough votes in Minnesota –

BRZEZINSKI: They could get to 60.

SCARBOROUGH: — they get to 60. I’m
not saying he stole any votes —

BRZEZINSKI: They’re gonna find them in the trunk
of a car.

SCARBOROUGH: — I’m just saying, as a Republican
from Florida, I mean, it’s a close
race. Steal some votes, you
get over the top.
Democrats have 60. Right, Barnicle?

MIKE BARNICLE (MSNBC political
analyst): And they have [Sen. Joe] Lieberman [I-CT].

[...]

BRZEZINSKI: Guys,
enough.

SCARBOROUGH: OK. So, we’re pulling
for the pirates. Go ahead.

BRZEZINSKI: No, they’re not like pirates like you read to [Scarborough's
daughter] Kate in a little book.

SCARBOROUGH: It’s not like Johnny
Depp?

BRZEZINSKI: They have hostages, idiots.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, that’s bad. We’re against them, then.

BRZEZINSKI: Pirates are expected to demand millions of
dollars in ransom.

SCARBOROUGH: Who are the hostages from?

BRZEZINSKI: OK, now you need to be quiet, all right? The longest-serving Republican in Senate history has been
defeated –

SCARBOROUGH: ‘Cause if it’s Ted Stevens, I’m
pulling for the pirates. Still,
if Ted Stevens is their hostage, I’m for the pirates.

BRZEZINSKI: Just weeks after being convicted on federal
corruption charges, Alaska’s Ted
Stevens has lost to Anchorage Mayor
Mark Begich, whose win moves Senate Democrats within two seats of a filibuster-proof majority.

SCARBOROUGH: All right. So, again, recapping: If Al Franken can steal enough votes in Minnesota, that’s get — that gets
Democrats to 59.

BRZEZINSKI: That’s right.

SCARBOROUGH: And then [Sen.] Saxby Chambliss [R-GA]
loses in the special run-off,
Democrats gets 60 — filibuster-proof majority.

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In a November 17 article, Time’s
Justin Horwath uncritically
repeated an “accus[ation]” by Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R) campaign that Minnesota Secretary
of State Mark Ritchie has ” ‘breach[ed]
neutrality’ by saying that the State Canvassing Board will probably
consider taking up … tossed absentee ballots” in
advance of a forthcoming recount in the Minnesota Senate race between Coleman
and Democratic challenger Al Franken. Franken,
who, Horwath noted, like Ritchie, “belongs to the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor coalition,”
filed a lawsuit in Ramsey County
District Court “seeking to obtain the names of voters’ whose absentee
ballots were rejected”
and “hopes to submit the ballots to the
State Canvassing Board for consideration.” But in reporting the Coleman campaign’s accusation of
partisanship by Ritchie, Horwath did not note that Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty approved of
the composition of the board Ritchie named to certify
the vote and oversee the recount or that a lawyer for Coleman’s
campaign reportedly said that the “state should feel good about who’s on
the panel,” as Media Matters for America
has documented.

Additionally,
while Horwath noted that the board “includes two Minnesota
Supreme Court Justices and two Ramsey County District Court judges,” he
did not point out that two of the board’s five members — Eric J. Magnuson and G. Barry Anderson — were appointed to the Minnesota Supreme
Court by Pawlenty.

From Horwath’s November 17 Time article,
“Coleman and Franken: Fighting Over the Minnesota Recount”:

The recount, which will cost
taxpayers roughly $87,000, promises to be arduous. The State Canvassing Board
will certify elections results Tuesday and the recount begins Wednesday, when
election officials in 110 locations across the state will analyze by hand each
of the nearly 3 million ballots to determine voter’s intent. (Minnesota uses optical scanners, and many
voters haphazardly filled in the intended ovals, didn’t do so at all or
otherwise improperly marked their ballots.) Thousands of party representatives
will literally be peering over their shoulders to challenge any apparent
discrepancy. By law, election officials must place any challenged ballots in a
separate pile for consideration by the State Canvassing Board. Secretary of
State Mark Ritchie chairs the five-member board, which also includes two
Minnesota Supreme Court Justices and two Ramsey County District Court judges.

On Saturday, the Coleman campaign
accused Ritchie, who, like Franken, belongs to the Democratic-Farmer-Labor
coalition, of “breaching neutrality” by saying that the State
Canvassing Board will probably consider taking up the tossed absentee ballots.
Ritchie has vowed to hold regular press conferences during the recount.
“The whole world is watching to see if we’re living up to our reputation
as Minnesota — our brand,” Ritchie
says. “Accuracy is the only measurement by which we can determine who won
this election.” Ritchie does not expect the recount to be completed until
at least December 19. If the results are a tie, the contest could be decided by
a coin toss.

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Minnesota’s Senate recount will be under way before Democrat Al Franken’s lawsuit over rejected absentee ballots gets a court hearing.

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that candidate Al Franken will meet with Democratic leadership in the Senate Tuesday to update them on the recount in Minnesota. Franken is locked in a tight race with Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman. The Senate leaders and the candidate also will talk about upcoming legislation, said Franken spokeswoman Colleen Murray. “If he should win this election, it would be irresponsible for him not to get ready to take office,” she said. “Minnesota deserves a senator who is ready to take office on day one.”

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During the November
13 edition of Fox News’ The
O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly claimed that Minnesota Secretary of
State Mark Ritchie (D) was “actively rooting for Al Franken” in the
Senate race between Franken and incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R) and that
“the fix is in.” But O’Reilly did not note that Republican
Gov. Tim Pawlenty approved of the composition of the canvassing board Ritchie named to certify
the vote and oversee the recount or that a lawyer for Coleman’s
campaign reportedly said that the
“state should feel good about who’s on the panel.”

During the show, O’Reilly also falsely claimed that
“since Election Day, Coleman didn’t get — they didn’t find one vote for
Coleman.” In fact, while Franken has netted more votes during the
statewide audit of unofficial election returns, election officials reportedly have
tallied additional votes for Coleman during the certification process as well.
O’Reilly also repeated the discredited suggestion that election
officials may have tampered with votes in an effort to benefit Franken by
mishandling 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis.

Previewing an upcoming discussion with Fox News analyst
Laura Ingraham, O’Reilly claimed, “The man in charge of the vote
count in Minnesota
is actively rooting for Al Franken.” During the subsequent discussion,
O’Reilly claimed, “[I]f the fix is in — and you just heard
the secretary of state — the fix is in. What does Coleman do?” However,
at no point during the discussion did O’Reilly or Ingraham point out that
the five-member canvassing board includes two judges appointed
to the Minnesota Supreme Court by Pawlenty, or that during the November 12
edition of Fox News’ Hannity &
Colmes, Pawlenty said, “Those folks were named today. The four
judges that were named — two of them I appointed to the Minnesota Supreme
Court. Two others have good reputations in Minnesota, so I think it’s gonna be a fair
system.” Moreover, the Associated Press reported on
November 13 that “Fritz Knaak, Coleman’s lead lawyer, said he was
comfortable with the board’s makeup. ‘The people of this state should
feel good about who’s on the panel,’ he said.”

During the discussion, O’Reilly further claimed of
Ritchie, “[T]his guy is the secretary of state. He’s in charge of
overseeing this thing, and now we’ve been investigating it. Do you
realize that since Election Day — do you know, that since Election Day,
Coleman didn’t get — they didn’t find one vote for Coleman. He lost 47 or 67
votes.” He later asked Ingraham, “You’re not finding any
votes for the Republican guy? None?” Ingraham responded, “No, of
course not.” But while the statewide audit of unofficial election results
has resulted in a net narrowing of Coleman’s lead, a November 11 Minneapolis Star Tribune article reported that
Coleman has received additional votes in some counties as a result of the
audit:

Monday was the deadline for counties
to certify their results. Depending on the unknown number that may not have yet
reported them to the state, that 206 figure could still change before the state
Canvassing Board meets next week to certify the official total. Only then will
the recount begin.

Officials with Hennepin County
forwarded their tally Monday to the secretary of state’s office, showing that,
since initial results Wednesday, Franken’s total had increased by 55 votes and
Coleman’s by 27 in the state’s largest county.

Adjustments in the vote tallies
because of misplaced figures and other errors have been limited to 22 of the
state’s 87 counties, according to an analysis of the fluctuations from
Wednesday to Monday.

Since the preliminary Election Day
numbers, Franken’s biggest gains were in Lake
County, where he added 246 votes, and
in Pine and St. Louis
counties, where he picked up 100 in each.

Coleman’s biggest gain was in Ramsey County,
29 votes, but that was more than canceled out by an additional 41 votes there
for Franken. Coleman’s biggest drop was 124 votes in Anoka County,
where Franken also lost 90 votes.

Moreover, O’Reilly claimed that “they’re
finding votes all over the place — in the trunks of cars, you know, up in the
tree” for Franken, forwarding the discredited rumor that 32 absentee
ballots from Minneapolis were mishandled. As Media Matters for America has
documented, on November 8 Knaak reportedly said, “We were actually told
ballots had been riding around in [Minneapolis
director of elections Cindy Reichert's] car for several days, which raised all
kinds of integrity questions.” However, Knaak reportedly said later on November 8 that he was
assured the
ballots weren’t tampered with, and also reportedly said on November
10 that “[i]t does not appear that there was any ballot-tampering, and
that was our concern.” Further, Hennepin
County officials have
repeatedly said the ballots were sealed and held in a secure location, and
Reichert has reportedly said that the claim that the ballots were in her car
was false, as was the claim that the ballots sat in a car for days.

From the November 13 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:

[begin video clip]

CONTESSA BREWER (MSNBC anchor): Do
you understand why the Coleman campaign is now questioning the integrity of the
vote counting?

RITCHIE: That’s part of their job of
trying to win at any price.

[end video clip]

O’REILLY: The man in charge of the
vote count in Minnesota
is actively rooting for Al Franken, and now there are charges of election
fraud. Laura Ingraham will analyze.

[...]

O’REILLY: Next on the rundown,
Laura Ingraham will react to our discussion and also analyze possible voter fraud in the intense Minnesota Senate race.

[...]

O’REILLY: But this guy is the
secretary of state. He’s in charge of overseeing this thing, and now
we’ve been investigating it. Do you realize that since Election Day
– do you know, that since Election Day, Coleman didn’t get — they didn’t
find one vote for Coleman. He lost 47 or 67 votes. The other guy, Franken,
they’re finding votes all over the place — in the trunks of cars –

INGRAHAM: Well, you know –

O’REILLY: — you know, up in
the tree. You know, and, I mean, everybody’s watching this, so I don’t
know, can you — do you think they can get away with it?

INGRAHAM: This is vote counting by David Copperfield.
I mean, this is like a David Blaine illusionist finding votes everywhere.

Look, this is my rule of thumb, Bill. Anytime a
Republican in a race like this is only winning by, let’s say, a thousand votes
or less, then you can bet that that Republican’s going to end up losing
that seat. It just always seems to work out this way, that — that the election
officials in the state where there’s, you know, some type of dispute,
always get into this kind of gray area, and — and we find now that these votes
– these 504 votes — came from three precincts — just three precincts out of
the whole state. That’s staggering.

And as John Lott pointed out, Bill, in a great column
he wrote that was in today’s New York Post,
the — the numbers of votes they found — found for — for Cole — for Franken, excuse me, since Election Day outpace the number they
found for Obama by 2.5, OK? Two-point-nine times as many votes were found for
all Democratic officials statewide.

O’REILLY: Well, but — but here’s the
deal. Here’s the deal.

INGRAHAM: Something doesn’t add up there. It’s very
strange.

O’REILLY: Everything doesn’t add up, not
something. Everything doesn’t add up. You’re not finding any votes for
the Republican guy? None?

INGRAHAM: No, of course not.

O’REILLY: You’re taking votes away
from the guy? And then, all of a sudden, as you pointed out, three — and what
are there, a thousand precincts? More than a thousand. Three, all right,
heavily Democratic, they’re kicking votes in like this. But here’s the deal.
If Franken gets in, that puts the Democrats over the 60 magic number. So, that
– that means it’s every American, because this is a far-left loon we’re
looking at right here — not Bill Clinton, Al Franken. He’s a loon, OK?
So, if he gets in, every American, every single person in this country is gonna
be impacted. And I just — see, I don’t know what you do here.

If — if the fix is in — and
you just heard the secretary of state — the fix is in. What does Coleman do?
Does he take it to the federal level? What does he do?

From the November 12 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes:

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): All right. Now, now — but
we have a problem with the secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, do we not? He’s a liberal
partisan secretary of state. When you look through his record, he has ties to
this controversial group we discuss a lot, ACORN. He attended the 2008
Democratic Convention.

How much faith and hope and
confidence do you have in Ritchie, considering his radical relationships and
partisanship — even connected to MoveOn.org?

PAWLENTY: Well, all secretary of
states are elected, and they have partisan backgrounds of one party or the
other. In this case, the final decisions are made by a canvassing board of five
people. It consists of the secretary of state plus four judges.

Those folks were named today. The
four judges that were named — two of them I appointed to the Minnesota Supreme
Court.

HANNITY: All right.

PAWLENTY: Two others have good reputations
in Minnesota,
so I think it’s gonna be a fair system.

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With only about 200
votes out of nearly 3 million cast separating Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger,
Al Franken, the race is headed to a recount.

Naturally, conservative radio hosts are working themselves
into a lather, baselessly accusing
Democrats of trying to “steal” the election. That shouldn’t
surprise anyone. But NBC and The New York
Times have also pushed the dubious notion that the Minnesota recount has been plagued by chaos
and impropriety.

Here’s
how Meredith Vieira, co-host of NBC’s Today, began a report on the Minnesota
recount: “If you thought the election debacle in Florida
could never happen again, wait until you see the situation in Minnesota.”

This is nonsense. The “debacle” in Florida wasn’t
that there was a recount; the “debacle” was an absurdly designed ballot that led to
thousands of people who
meant to vote for Al Gore voting for Pat Buchanan instead. The “debacle”
was that thousands of voters were improperly
purged from voter rolls.
The “debacle” was that the state’s electoral votes were
awarded to the candidate for whom fewer voters attempted to cast ballots. None
of those factors are present in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Senate race is simply in the midst of a
recount. Recounts happen. They aren’t the illegitimate, anything-goes street fights the media
pretend they are; they are a part of how elections work, their process written
into law and executed every year. They are necessary, for a perfectly obvious
reason: They make it
more likely that the candidate who receives the most votes takes office. That
is an unequivocally good thing.

During that Today
segment, reporter Lee Cowan announced that the situation “has some
remembering shades of Florida,
of butterfly ballots and hanging chads. There are neither of those here.”

What possible
reason could there be for bringing up “butterfly ballots and hanging
chads,” given that “there are neither of those” present in Minnesota? Whatever the
intent, the effect is clear — it creates the impression that the situation in Minnesota is utter chaos, a “debacle” in
the making.

Cowan continued: “Still, ballots have suddenly
appeared out of nowhere, including some found unsecured in an election worker’s
car.”

That appears to be completely false. Election officials have
said the ballots did not “suddenly appear[] out of nowhere,” and
they were not “unsecured.” The claim about unsecured ballots in a
car appears to have originated with Norm Coleman’s lawyer. Cowan did not attribute
the car story to anyone or anything,
he simply asserted it as fact. Adopting and repeating Coleman’s
lawyer’s claims as though they are facts is bad enough. What
makes it worse is that the lawyer had already backed off the claim. Two full
days before Cowan’s report, the Coleman lawyer had been quoted saying that “we’ve heard
enough from the city attorney to let go of this. It does not appear that there
was any ballot-tampering, and that was our concern.”

So Cowan offered a sensational and — by his own
acknowledgement — wholly irrelevant comparison to the “butterfly ballots
and hanging chads” of the 2000 recount. Then he made a false assertion of
ballots materializing out of thin air, and of unsecured ballots — an assertion
that seems to have been based entirely on the already-retracted claims of a
Coleman campaign lawyer.

Vieira
concluded the segment by referring to the “mess in Minnesota.” But there is no mess. There is simply a recount — a
recount that does not involve
butterfly ballots or hanging chads,
a recount that, despite the best efforts of Vieira and Cowan to convince us otherwise, has
not a thing in common with the “debacle” in Florida. Just a simple recount.

Today’s New York
Times similarly promoted the idea of chaos and impropriety in the Minnesota recount –
without actually providing any evidence or examples. The Times reported:

If Fritz Knaak has his way, Mr. Franken will
never have a shot at solving those problems. A lawyer hired by Mr. Coleman
expressly for the recount, Mr. Knaak described himself as “the new gun
with the shiny pistol.” Citing
suspicion over what he called a series of “shenanigans” that have
narrowed Mr. Coleman’s lead, he has requested the official
paper tape with the number of ballots and the time stamp printed out by each ballot
machine, in every voting precinct.

The Times gave
no examples of “shenanigans” or any indication of who is
“suspicious” that such “shenanigans” have occurred. Nor
did it give any indication that it asked Knaak for examples of either shenanigans
or suspicion.

Later in the article, the Times
reported:

Mr. Coleman’s campaign manager, Cullen
Sheehan, accused the Franken campaign of “a brazen, last minute act of
desperation,” by asking Hennepin
County, which includes Minneapolis, to reconsider
461 rejected absentee ballots.

Mr. Franken’s
lead lawyer, Marc Elias, called such assertions of ballot stuffing
“fanciful and bogus.”

But there were no “assertions of ballot
stuffing” — none the Times
reported, anyway. The Times
simply quoted Coleman’s campaign manager saying the Franken
campaign’s request to reconsider previously rejected ballots is an
indication of “desperation.” That’s quite different from
making an allegation of “ballot stuffing.”

Then the Times
reported that Minneapolis Star Tribune
columnist Katherine Kersten expressed concerns about the ability of
Minnesota’s Democratic secretary
of state, Mark Ritchie,
to act impartially during the recount, without indicating Kersten’s own
political leanings. As Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert explained,
“Kersten is a right-winger who smeared
Franken right before Election Day as a ’slanderer of Christianity.’ “

Next, the Times
quoted a “Republican researcher” who is “very, very
concerned” about Ritchie. Then it quoted Sean Hannity saying “[f]ishy business” is
occurring in Minnesota,
where Democrats and elections officials are
“up to no good.” To what “[f]ishy
business” was Hannity referring? Were his allegations legitimate? The Times did not say.

Finally, the Times
quoted the Facebook status of “Noah Rouen, 34,” a Minnesota man on a pheasant hunt who, along
with his friends, “could not help but hatch a conspiracy theory.”

If it seems the Times
is desperate to find people concerned about the legitimacy of the Minnesota
recount — resorting to quoting vague allegations from hard-right partisans
like Sean Hannity and Facebook conspiracy theories — maybe that’s
because Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota’s Republican governor, says there is
“no actual evidence that there’s been any fraud or problems.” (That quote didn’t appear in the Times article; maybe it got cut to make room
for the pheasant hunter’s Facebook status.) And as Media Matters noted,
the Times did not note that Pawlenty said that the bipartisan state canvassing board Ritchie appointed to oversee the recount was “fair”
and that a lawyer for Coleman’s campaign reportedly said that the “state should feel
good about who’s on the panel.”

The news media’s tendency to compare any recount to
the “butterfly ballots and hanging chads” made famous during
Florida’s 2000 recount, and to breathlessly report the merest rumor of impropriety,
is not merely lazy and absurd and sensationalist. It is also dangerous. It
causes people to be frightened and concerned about all recounts — to be wary
of the very concept of recounts.
But recounts needn’t be like the “debacle” of 2000; in fact,
they rarely are. They are far more frequently the best way to ensure that
errors in counting do not result in the candidate who received fewer votes
taking office. (Indeed, in 2004, a manual recount in the Washington governor’s race reversed the results of the
initial Election Day tabulations and machine recount.) Sensational and baseless
reporting like that produced this week by NBC and The New York Times runs the risk of undermining public confidence in
an essential part of the democratic process.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

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In a November 14 article about the
upcoming recount of ballots cast in the Minnesota Senate race, The New
York Times reported that Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, “who
is in charge of the recount” in the race between Sen. Norm Coleman (R)
and challenger Al Franken (D), “lamented the campaigns’ ‘hand
grenades at each other.’ ” The Times added: “But as a well-known
Democrat, he has not eluded those grenades, with Republicans strongly
questioning his objectivity.” The Times
also reported that a five-member “state canvassing board will meet Dec.
16 to review all challenged ballots.” However, in reporting that
Republicans are “strongly questioning his objectivity,” the Times did not note that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, said that the board Ritchie named was “fair”
and that a lawyer for Coleman’s campaign reportedly said that the “state should feel
good about who’s on the panel.”

In a November 12 press release, the
Secretary of State’s office announced the five members of the State Canvassing Board:

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie today announced the
members of the State Canvassing Board. By Minnesota law, representation must include
two Minnesota Supreme Court justices, two district court judges and the board
is chaired by the Secretary of State. Canvass board members named are Minnesota
Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric J. Magnuson and Justice G. Barry Anderson.
Chief Judge Kathleen R. Gearin and Assistant Chief Judge Edward J. Cleary have
also been tapped from the Second Judicial District to serve on the board.
Ritchie made his selections based upon recommendations made by Chief Justice
Magnuson and Chief Judge Gearin.

Magnuson and Anderson were appointed to
the Minnesota Supreme Court by Pawlenty. The Associated Press reported of them:

• ERIC
  MAGNUSON: A former law firm colleague of
  Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Magnuson was appointed by Pawlenty to the
  Minnesota Supreme Court in June as its chief justice. Magnuson, 57, a noted
  appellate lawyer, sealed the governor’s hold on the seven-member court as his
  fourth appointee. He worked with Pawlenty at the now-defunct Rider Bennett law
  firm and screened potential judicial appointees for Pawlenty from 2003 to 2008.
  Magnuson is viewed as a friend to social conservatives.

• G.
  BARRY ANDERSON: A former attorney for the state Republican Party, Anderson has served on the
  state Supreme Court since Pawlenty put him there in 2004. Anderson, 54, served on the state Court of
  Appeals for six years and has declined partisan endorsements in his judicial
  elections. He was city attorney in Hutchinson,
  Minn., from 1987 to 1998. Anderson specialized in
  civil trials before his judicial career began.

In a November 13 article the St. Paul Pioneer
Press reported:

They’re
the Minnesota General Election Canvassing Board, and, after a hand recount of 2.92
million ballots, they will scrutinize some fraction of those ballots in an
attempt to focus — amid the circus of mass media scrutiny and political
maneuvering, and through the scribble of errant pen strokes on bubble forms — whether each voter
wanted to re-elect Republican Sen. Norm Coleman or to replace him with Democrat
Al Franken.

[...]

State
law defines the canvassing board as two state Supreme Court justices, two
district judges and the secretary of state. Ritchie asked Magnuson and Gearin
to pick two from their respective pools. They picked themselves and their
next-highest-ranking jurist.

Politically,
the panel is diverse. Magnuson and Anderson were appointed by Republican Gov.
Tim Pawlenty. Gearin was elected in a nonpartisan race in 1986 and declined to
say with what party, if any, she aligns herself. Cleary was appointed by
Independence Party Gov. Jesse Ventura.

That
mix is pleasing to Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of
Politics and Governance at the University
of Minnesota’s Humphrey
Institute.

“These
are some of our very best judges,” he said. “I look at that and say,
‘This is going to be fair.’ “

Jacobs
also noted that Ritchie and the canvassing board have little to do with the
bulk of the recount process.

The AP reported on November 13
that “Fritz Knaak, Coleman’s lead lawyer, said he was comfortable with
the board’s makeup. ‘The people of this state should feel good about
who’s on the panel,’ he said.”

Similarly, during the November 12 edition
of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes,
Pawlenty said of the board: “In this case, the final decisions are made
by a canvassing board of five people. It consists of the secretary of state
plus four judges. Those folks were named today. The four judges that were
named, two of them I appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court … two others
have good reputations in Minnesota, so I think it’s going to be a fair
system.”

Additionally, the Times stated that Knaak has been
“[a]ccusing the Franken campaign of using ’shenanigans’
to narrow Mr. Coleman’s lead” during the pre-recount audit of votes
in the Minnesota Senate race. However, the Times
did not note, as Media Matters for America has documented, that Pawlenty has said that there is “no actual evidence that
there’s been any fraud or problems” in counting the votes. Nor did the Times note that with regard to one issue that Knaak raised, he subsequently
said he’s been assured there
weren’t any purported shenanigans. On
November 8, Knaak said of the discredited
rumor that ballots were left in Minneapolis director of elections Cindy
Reichert’s car: “We were actually told ballots had been riding around in
her car for several days, which raised all kinds of integrity questions.”
However, Knaak also reportedly said that same day that he was assured the ballots weren’t
tampered with. On November 10, Knaak further stated: “It does not appear
that there was any ballot-tampering, and that was our concern.”

From the November 14 New York Times article:

The
state canvassing board will meet Dec. 16 to review all challenged ballots, and
hopes to conclude its work by Dec. 19, Mr. Ritchie said, although he made no
promises.

Both
campaigns are scrambling to assemble recount teams — soliciting online
donations, rounding up hundreds of volunteers and deploying legions of lawyers.

The
Coleman team recently got $5,000 from the political action committee of Mitt
Romney, the former Republican presidential hopeful.

The
Franken’s campaign is asking supporters to house volunteers who will
travel across the state during the recount.

“The
office is actually more crowded than it’s ever been at any time in the
campaign because we have to mount this so quickly,” said Mr. Franken, who
has appealed to major supporters for financial and legal help. “I’m
sort of anxious to get to work, with multiple problems facing the country.
It’s weird to not be able to do that.”

If
Fritz Knaak has his way, Mr. Franken will never have a shot at solving those
problems. A lawyer hired by Mr. Coleman expressly for the recount, Mr. Knaak
described himself as “the new gun with the shiny pistol.” Citing
suspicion over what he called a series of “shenanigans” that have
narrowed Mr. Coleman’s lead, he has requested the official paper tape
with the number of ballots and the time stamp printed out by each ballot
machine, in every voting precinct.

In
interviews, Mr. Coleman has said he had hoped taxpayers would be spared the
expense of a recount, which Mr. Ritchie’s office estimated at 3 cents a
ballot, or about $87,000, not including each campaign’s expenses.

As the
recount nears, brickbats from the candidates, their surrogates and ordinary
voters are coming fast and furious.

Mr.
Coleman’s campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, accused the Franken campaign
of “a brazen, last minute act of desperation,” by asking Hennepin County,
which includes Minneapolis,
to reconsider 461 rejected absentee ballots.

Mr.
Franken’s lead lawyer, Marc Elias, called such assertions of ballot
stuffing “fanciful and bogus.”

Mr.
Ritchie, who is in charge of the recount, lamented the campaigns’
“hand grenades at each other.” But as a well-known Democrat, he has
not eluded those grenades, with Republicans strongly questioning his
objectivity.

In a
statement on Wednesday, the Coleman campaign cited “concerns about”
Mr. Ritchie’s “ability to act as an unbiased
official.”

From the November 12 edition of Fox
News’ Hannity & Colmes:

SEAN HANNITY (co-host):
All right. Now, for — but we have a problem with the secretary of state, Mark
Ritchie, do we not? He’s a liberal partisan secretary of state. When you look
through his record, he has ties to this controversial group we discuss a lot,
ACORN. He attended the 2008 Democratic convention. How much faith and hope and
confidence do you have in Ritchie considering his radical relationships and
partisanship, even connected to MoveOn.org?

PAWLENTY:
Well, all secretaries of states are elected, and they have partisan backgrounds
of one party or the other. In this case, the final decisions are made by a
canvassing board of five people. It consists of the secretary of state plus
four judges. Those folks were named today. The four judges that were named, two
of them I appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court –

HANNITY:
All right –

PAWLENTY:
– two others have good reputations in Minnesota,
so I think it’s going to be a fair system.

Continue reading...

Source: [b]The Hill[/b]

Judge dimisses Coleman lawsuit
By Michael O’Brien
Posted: 11/13/08 05:53 PM [ET]

A Minnesota judge Thursday threw out a lawsuit against Al Franken by Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who claimed his Democratic opponent had defamed him in ads.

Judge Barbara L. …

Continue reading...

In recent days, several conservative talk
radio hosts have accused Democrats of “trying to steal” the Minnesota senatorial election for Democratic
challenger Al Franken over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R). They offer no evidence to back up their accusation, and, according
to the state’s Republican
governor, there is none. Gov. Tim Pawlenty said on November 12 on Sean Hannity’s radio show that there is “no actual evidence that there’s been any
fraud or problems” in counting the votes.

Also, on the November 12 edition of Hannity & Colmes, Hannity asked
Pawlenty: “Do you suspect there’s been cheating going on?” Pawlenty
replied: “Sean, we don’t have any direct evidence of that, and when
you make an allegation — not you, but anybody — of fraud in an election, it’s
a very serious matter, so you gotta have specific evidence to back it
up.”

The following conservative talk radio
hosts have baselessly accused Democrats of trying to “steal” the
election:

• Mark Levin: On the
  November 11 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Levin
  described Franken as a “spiteful troll,” and said: “I
  see he and his fellow hoods are trying to steal the election in Minnesota.”

• Rush Limbaugh: On the
  November 12 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, during a
  discussion with a caller about the upcoming Georgia run-off between
  Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin,
  Limbaugh stated: “At this point, people in Georgia have gotta take
  this very seriously. Because the Democrats are trying to steal Minnesota, and they’re gonna, they’re –
  he’s [Chambliss] gotta win this runoff in Georgia.”

• Chris Baker: On the
  November 13 broadcast of his Minneapolis-based radio program, Baker
  asserted that “the left” have “become the fascists that
  they have claimed to be the watchdog to protect people from.” He
  added: “And it’s really frightening, especially with the
  coming political situation. I mean, once the Norm Coleman election is
  stolen, and they get rid of [Sen.] Ted Stevens [R-AK], and
  they maybe get rid of Saxby Chambliss, with a supermajority, these people
  are gonna run amok, and it’s all over and we’re all gonna be
  in irons.”

From the November 11 edition of ABC Radio
Networks’ The Mark
Levin Show:

LEVIN:
Well, speaking of the spiteful troll, aka Al Franken, I see he and his fellow
hoods are trying to steal the election in Minnesota. May I say a brief prayer out
loud? Dear God, I think we’ve had about all we can take in this last
election. Please, please, not a Senator Al Franken. What would the Founding
Fathers say? My God, please. All right, now, I would be remiss if I
didn’t thank our new affiliate in Nacogdoches,
Texas — KSFA. There we go.
Let’s go to Katie, Oxford,
New Jersey.

From the November 12 broadcast of
Premiere Radio Networks’ Rush Limbaugh
Show:

CALLER:
I’m a little frustrated. Well, that’s not true; I’m very
frustrated. I kind of feel like my vote is being extorted down here. You know, Georgia
conservatives screamed bloody murder over the bailout, and Saxby Chambliss
refused to vote with us. He went up there and — and did what he wanted to do
– whatever he wanted to do, which is, you know, even come clean down here and
admitted –

LIMBAUGH:
I know, I know. I know it. He voted for the gang of whatever on the offshore
drilling. He made a tactical mistake there. At this point, people in Georgia
have gotta take this very seriously. Because the Democrats are trying to steal Minnesota, and they’re gonna, they’re –
he’s gotta win this runoff in Georgia. If — if — if we lose
these two they’re up to 59.

CALLER:
I know, Rush. I am — I’m in total agreement with you there. And I
continue to write and write and write letters over to their campaign begging
them for just one humble moment to admit that the bailout was a really bad
idea, and that it’s down the tubes further than anybody could have
imagined, and just to admit that he’s in Washington to represent me.

LIMBAUGH:
Not gonna do it. He’s not gonna — he’s not gonna do it.

From the November 13 broadcast of KTLK’s The Chris Baker Show:

BAKER:
See, we’ve — we’ve come to a point where if you have an opinion
that opposes the left, sorry, you must be silenced and shut down.

LANGDON PERRY (KTLK host):
Right.

BAKER:
I don’t hear conservatives asking for people to be thrown out of their
job on a regular basis. I don’t hear conservatives on a regular basis say
that people should be ostracized, culled from the herd. But, man, you get these
people all wound up, and they, you know, they burst into a church over the
weekend.

PERRY:
The left, I think, has become much more the party of “you can’t say
that” or “you can’t do that.”

BAKER:
They have become the fascists that they have claimed to be the watchdog to
protect people from. And it’s really frightening, especially with the
coming political situation. I mean, once the Norm Coleman election is stolen,
and they get rid of Ted Stevens and they maybe get rid of Saxby Chambliss, with
a supermajority, these people are gonna run amok, and it’s all over and
we’re all gonna be in irons.

From the November 12 edition of Fox
News’ Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY:
And this is a “Fox News Alert.” The recount has not even
started in Minnesota,
and somehow Al Franken has already shaved off more than 500 votes off the incumbent
lead. That’s Norm Coleman.

Now,
Republican Coleman was up by 725 votes last Wednesday
morning, but as of yesterday that difference has now shrunk to just 206.
Coleman’s vanishing lead came during a week when Minnesota election officials
were required to check their initial results.

Under
normal practices, both candidates would expect a bump, but these strange
circumstances have seen only Franken’s vote totals swell. Now, the
Minneapolis
director of elections claims to have found 32 absentee ballots hiding in the
trunk of her car — all of them conveniently going to Al Franken.

Liberal-leaning
precincts in Two Harbors, Minnesota, and Partridge
Township threw Franken
another 346 votes combined, claiming
that wrong numbers were initially submitted. Again, Coleman’s vote total — it remained
unchanged. Plus, Franken’s changes are nearly three times the gains for
Democratic candidates statewide. So, the question is: Is the fix in?

Joining
us now is Minnesota Governor Tim
Pawlenty. Governor, as I describe that — I’m sorry, no reasonable person can
conclude there’s not funny business going on here. What is your thoughts on
this?

PAWLENTY:
Sean, in the practice of law, there’s a phenomenon called disparate impact,
which means when something is so out of proportion to what the norm or the
trend would be, it at least raises a concern or a suspicion.

In Minnesota,
we don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing, but these patterns that you’ve just
described cause us concern, because even if you’re in a part of the state
that’s overwhelmingly Democrat, Norm Coleman should be getting some of the votes, not losing 100
percent or 90 percent to Al Franken. So, it’s cause for concern for sure.

[...]

HANNITY:
But here’s the problem. We did not have a uniform system in terms of the day
after Election Day to protect those ballots. So, in other words, the different
precincts — so, in other words, my fear is that the fix may already been in,
and during the recount, we’re going gonna
discover, oh, there’s another 500 votes for Franken.

When
you look at these changed votes
so far, Governor, you know, we see that, for example, the Senate gains for
Franken were two and a half times that than the gain for Barack Obama, and
Barack Obama way outperformed Franken in the state of Minnesota; 2.9 times the
total of the Democrats across the congressional races; and five times the net
loss that Democrats suffered for all statehouse races. So, he’s outperforming
every single solitary measure. So, I’m asking — I guess, Governor, I guess my
question is honest: Do you suspect there’s been cheating going on?

PAWLENTY:
Sean, we don’t have any direct evidence of that, and when
you make an allegation — not you, but anybody — of fraud in an election, it’s
a very serious matter, so you gotta have specific evidence to back it up.

What we
do know is the statistics that you’re citing and the patterns that you’re citing
are suspicious. They seem to defy probability theory; they seem to defy common
sense. Even in an overwhelmingly Democratic area, Norm Coleman would be getting
some of those votes — 20, 30, 40 percent.
That’s not happening, so it raises a red flag.

From the November 12 edition of ABC Radio
Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show:

HANNITY:
Well, here’s what I read. John Lott wrote a very frightening piece about
what’s happening here, and he chronicled how we’ve gone from 725
votes — what are we, down to 206 votes separating the two in Norm
Coleman’s favor?

PAWLENTY:
Correct.

HANNITY:
OK. So he points out that, for example, the Senate gains for Franken were two
and a half times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count. In other
words, these ballots “oops” that we found — now here’s a
state where Barack Obama won fairly handily. But yet, these ballots that
we’re now finding, you know, are favoring Franken two and a half times
than that of the gain of Obama; 2.9 times the gain of the Democrats and what
they got all across Minnesota
in congressional races; and five — five times the net loss the Democrats
suffered for all state house races.

PAWLENTY:
Yeah, those — those are definitely a concern, Sean. I want to be clear. You
know, Minnesota
has a tradition of clean elections, and good election systems, and there
isn’t any actual evidence of wrongdoing or fraud yet. But the pattern
that you just described, as long as — and as well as the ballots in the trunk
and some other things — raise concerns, and we need to make sure that the
ballots are secure, the process is transparent, that there is a uniform
standard, and that all these things are looked into and make sure that they are
fully legitimate — and that’s gonna happen.

HANNITY:
Does Norm Coleman have operatives or — or members of his campaign now, 24
hours a day around these voting machines, et cetera?

PAWLENTY:
Yeah, the news accounts suggest that he has dispatched people to watch the
room, and there — most of the counties’ administrators, you know, have a
room that’s locked — and this county that issued the court order, they
actually only have two people can have access to it. People have to sign in or
sign out; they have to explain why they would even go in the room in the first
place. The campaign’s gonna have monitors as to who would go into the
room or out of the room. That’s the kind of uniform standard we’d
like all the counties to use, I know that those –

HANNITY:
Has that been implemented? Here’s the problem, though. Because there
hasn’t been a recount yet. Has that been implemented from — from the day
after election or no?

PAWLENTY:
Day — no. But –

HANNITY:
That’s a problem, Governor. Because that means it could have already
happened.

PAWLENTY:
That’s also true. But there is no actual evidence, Sean. I wanna be
clear. There’s no actual evidence that there’s been any fraud or
problems there. There are these patterns of concern, and again, Norm’s
campaign and Franken’s campaign were close as of a day ago to have an
agreement about how to handle all this.

HANNITY:
All right, Governor Tim Pawlen