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rumor himself -- has stated that "[t]here's a news report in Minnesota that the ballot-in-the-trunk story has now been retracted, that it wasn't accurate."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.

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.

In fact, while Fritz Knaak, a lawyer for Sen. Norm Coleman (R), reportedly said on November 8, "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," he also reportedly said that same day that he was assured the ballots weren't tampered with. On November 10, Knaak further reportedly said that "[i]t does not appear that there was any ballot-tampering, and that was our concern."

Additionally, citing "Hennepin County officials," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported of the absentee ballots in question: "On Election Day, officials attempted to deliver absentee ballots that arrived as part of a late mail delivery to the appropriate precinct. But some precincts had closed by the time they got there, and the ballots were returned to a secure location before being counted according to state law." Additionally, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on November 9 that the "32 Minneapolis ballots were part of the normal delivery of absentee ballots late in the polling day, according to Election Director Cindy Reichert. She said they were retained when they couldn't be delivered because some polling places had shut down for the day. She said the ballots were kept sealed until other election duties were completed and were being counted Saturday afternoon, with results to be delivered to the state on Monday."

Nevertheless, in addition to Matthews, several media figures and outlets have advanced the rumor that the ballots were mishandled, including The Wall Street Journal, NBC correspondent Lee Cowan, and Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, and Bill O'Reilly.

From the November 14 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

NATE SILVER (FiveThirtyEight.com): Frankly, in Minneapolis and Hennepin County, you probably have Democrats looking at these ballots. He has maybe a kind of a home-field advantage here too. The secretary of state, you know, is a Democrat in Minnesota, so that's why Coleman's a little scared, trying to kind of cut off the recount before it starts, which you can't really do legally. But he knows that those 200 votes mean very little once you start counting, you know, the millions of votes that were cast in that race.

MATTHEWS: What about these absentee ballots that were found in somebody's back seat and they're now counting them as official -- what is that about? That sounds pretty squirrely or sneaky or what -- I don't know what it sounds like. What do you make of it?

SILVER: Well, I doesn't look good for the state in general when you have these numbers changing, but this actually happens in every state where vote counts are finalized over a 10-day to 14-day period. It happens -- usually people don't care if Obama wins by 10,008 votes instead of 10,012 or something, but when it's this close, people notice stuff like this. Yeah, I think it looks bad for Minnesota if you have this happening in some places, but they seem to be isolated incidents to me and not any kind of widespread fraud.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, well, if I lost by 30 votes and I found out that somebody had found 30 votes in their back seat, I'd be upset. Let's take a look at the Georgia Senate race.

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.

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.

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.

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 Pawlenty. Appreciate you, updating on us -- updating for us these -- these goings-on in Minnesota. But it's somewhat frightening to me. All right, we gotta --

PAWLENTY: I understand.

HANNITY: Well, we'll stay on it. Appreciate it, Governor Pawlenty. Thank you.

Although Cowan interviewed Knaak for the segment and aired a clip of Knaak apparently stating of the absentee ballots, "It was sort of the classic, very Minnesotan, I suppose, 'Well you just have to trust us.' I don't think so," Cowan did not mention the statements in which Knaak reportedly said he felt assured that the ballots weren't compromised. Nor did Cowan give any indication that he had contacted Minnesota election officials about the ballots.

As Media Matters for America has documented, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported of the absentee ballots in question: "On Election Day, officials attempted to deliver absentee ballots that arrived as part of a late mail delivery to the appropriate precinct. But some precincts had closed by the time they got there, and the ballots were returned to a secure location before being counted according to state law." Additionally, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on November 9 that the "32 Minneapolis ballots were part of the normal delivery of absentee ballots late in the polling day, according to Election Director Cindy Reichert. She said they were retained when they couldn't be delivered because some polling places had shut down for the day. She said the ballots were kept sealed until other election duties were completed and were being counted Saturday afternoon, with results to be delivered to the state on Monday."

From the November 13 edition of NBC's Today:

MEREDITH VIEIRA (co-host): If you thought the election debacle in Florida could never happen again, wait until you see the situation in Minnesota. Just over 200 votes separate Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and former Saturday Night Live star Al Franken in the race for the Senate. A recount gets under way next week, and NBC's Lee Cowan has more. Good morning, Lee.

COWAN: Good morning, Meredith. It was the razor-thin margin in this race here in Minnesota that forced this recount, which is gonna be the largest in Minnesota's history. Nearly 3 million ballots were cast; they now all have to be recounted by hand starting next week, and both campaigns are bringing in a whole lot of observers and a whole lot of lawyers.

[begin video clip]

COWAN: Election night in Minnesota after a long and nasty race. The winner? Well, no one.

FRANKEN: I believe that when all the votes are counted, we're gonna win this thing.

COLEMAN: Save your energy, OK? Keep being hopeful. I'm very -- feeling very good right now.

COWAN: Republican incumbent Norm Coleman was ahead by a mere 725 votes that night. But Saturday Night Live favorite Al Franken was catching up.

FRANKEN: What? You -- you thought this was going to be easy?

COWAN: By the next morning, Coleman's lead had dwindled to 477 votes; by the end of last week, 336. And by Wednesday, Franken was behind by just 206 votes.

MARC ELIAS (Franken campaign lawyer): I mean, think about that. Seven one-thousandths of a percent is the margin between these two.

COWAN: But Norm Coleman's lawyers aren't happy.

KNAAK: It seems actually very odd to us.

COWAN: It has some remembering shades of Florida, of butterfly ballots and hanging chads. There are neither of those here. Still, ballots have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, including some found unsecured in an election worker's car. Count them or not?

KNAAK: It was sort of the classic, very Minnesotan, I suppose, "Well, you just have to trust us." I don't think so.

COWAN: The race turned Minnesota nice into Minnesota mean, and hand-to-hand recount of millions of ballots is sure to make it worse.

ELIAS: They're licking their wounds, and I understand their natural impulse to run out and say, "Oh, no, no, no, stop counting, stop counting." But that isn't the way democracy happens.

COWAN: And now that it's not really over, voters are scrambling for a silver lining.

"CJ" (Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist): The only good thing about the recount is that there are no TV commercials, because we're tired of the commercials.

COWAN: Still, the reality is --

JOHN LOTT (University of Maryland visiting senior research scientist): I would imagine it's gonna be a very emotional thing for a while.

[end video clip]

COWAN: And the very real possibility, Meredith, is that by the time the next Congress convenes, Minnesota may have only one sitting U.S. senator, because they're still trying to figure this out. The counting may be over, but the legal challenges may just be beginning. Meredith.

VIEIRA: All right, Lee Cowan. A mess in Minnesota. Thank you very much.

• In a November 12 editorial headlined "Mischief in Minnesota?" the Journal wrote: "You'd think Democrats would be content with last week's electoral rout. But judging from the odd doings in Minnesota, some in their party wouldn't mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken." The Journal wrote of the absentee ballots: "[N]early every 'fix' has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances. For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car."

• During the November 11 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, host Sean Hannity said to Fox News contributor Lanny Davis: "You're missing a lot of issues here that actually matter, and one is lack of transparency. Another is a lack of uniform standards for protecting of the ballots. We have an issue of ballots showing up in a car somewhere, and then they're gonna be counted? Where were these ballots before? So there -- there's a lot of questions about -- about, you know, behavior on the part of some."

• Similarly, during the November 11 edition of Fox News' Special Report, host Brit Hume said, "The campaigns are also negotiating ballot security standards after an unsuccessful challenge by Coleman to halt the counting of 32 absentee ballots that were supposedly left for days in the trunk of an election official's car." During Hume's report, on-screen graphics read "FRAUD ALERT" and "CAR TROUBLE."

In a November 12 MinnPost.com article, reporter and Minneapolis Public Radio media analyst David Brauer explained the origins of the story that the missing ballots had been in Reichert's car: "The 'car ballot' story emerged Saturday [November 8] from the mouth of Coleman lawyer Fritz Knaak, who, according to AP, told reporters, 'We were actually told ballots had been riding around in her car for several days, which raised all kinds of integrity questions.' "

But contrary to the accusations by the Journal, Hannity, and Hume, Brauer also reported: "Knaak never provided a source and did not return two MinnPost calls for comment. However, he was already backing off his story at the same press event. As that day's [St. Paul] Pioneer Press noted, 'Knaak said he feels assured that what was going on with the 32 ballots was neither wrong nor unfair.' "

Indeed, the Star Tribune further reported in a November 11 article that Knaak said on November 10 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." From the article:

One dispute resolved

On Saturday, the Coleman campaign had asked for an injunction to stop the counting of 32 absentee ballots in Minneapolis that had not been delivered on Election Day. A judge declined to grant the injunction, and Knaak said Monday 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."

Minneapolis city election officials said the 32 ballots were never "missing" and were delivered after Election Day.

Knaak said that with certified totals in, the campaign is now focused on the recount process.

A November 8 AP article also reported: "Knaak also 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."

Regarding the integrity of the ballots, Brauer reported that Reichert made "three fundamental points":

Before getting into the details, she makes three fundamental points:

1. The ballots where never in her car.

2. The ballots were never in anyone's car for several days.

3. The ballots were never lost or forgotten, and spent Election Night until counting day in secure city facilities. [emphasis in original]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on November 9 that the "32 Minneapolis ballots were part of the normal delivery of absentee ballots late in the polling day, according to Election Director Cindy Reichert. She said they were retained when they couldn't be delivered because some polling places had shut down for the day. She said the ballots were kept sealed until other election duties were completed and were being counted Saturday afternoon, with results to be delivered to the state on Monday."

Similarly, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on November 10 that on Election Day, officials "attempted to deliver absentee ballots that arrived as part of a late mail delivery to the appropriate precinct. But some precincts had closed by the time they got there, and the ballots were returned to a secure location before being counted according to state law."

From The Wall Street Journal's November 12 editorial:

The vanishing Coleman vote came during a week in which election officials are obliged to double-check their initial results. Minnesota is required to do these audits, and it isn't unusual for officials to report that they transposed a number here or there. In a normal audit, these mistakes could be expected to cut both ways. Instead, nearly every "fix" has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.

For example, there was Friday night's announcement by Minneapolis's director of elections that she'd forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car. The Coleman campaign scrambled to get a county judge to halt the counting of these absentees, since it was impossible to prove their integrity 72 hours after the polls closed. The judge refused on grounds that she lacked jurisdiction.

From the November 11 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: You're missing a lot of issues here that actually matter, and one is lack of transparency. Another is a lack of uniform standards for protecting of the ballots. We have an issue of ballots showing up in a car somewhere, and then they're gonna be counted? Where were these ballots before?

So there -- there's a lot of questions about -- about, you know, behavior on the part of some.

From the November 11 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

HUME: There are worries about what's up in that Minnesota Senate race, where Republican incumbent Norm Coleman was ahead of Democrat Al Franken by 725 votes the morning after the election.

But Franken has narrowed the gap to about 200, even though a recount has not yet been started. That is because election officials are correcting supposed typos in how the numbers were reported. Those corrections have added 435 votes to Franken while taking away 69 from Coleman. And virtually all of Franken's new votes came from just three of the more than 41,000 precincts.

The campaigns are also negotiating ballot security standards after an unsuccessful challenge by Coleman to halt the counting of 32 absentee ballots that were supposedly left for days in the trunk of an election official's car.

Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty says, quote, "These changes seem to disproportionally -- overwhelmingly favor Al Franken."