We've arrived at Day 6 of the recount in Minnesota with both campaigns making various claims about how large Senator Coleman's current lead is.  The mood of the recount and the comportment of each campaign--having started as generally collegial and respectful of the democratic process--has rapidly escalated into a posturing war.  Dueling press conferences are happening at least once per day, as each side claims to be gaining.  More specifically, both sides are challenging an increasing number of ballots, perhaps frivolously so as to appear to be in the lead at the end of the recount.  Senator Coleman, in particular, is hoping to be leading after the Election Day count, AND the recount so that any actions taken by the Canvassing Board would be easily discredited should Franken turn out to be the winner.

The challenges themselves exist in many specific types.  Minnesota Public Radio's website has a fantastic visual display of some examples of challenged ballots.  For those unfamiliar with the process, the prevailing standard that will be used for determining which ballots are and are not accepted will be the clear intent of the voter. The ultimate determination on voter intent will come from a five-member canvassing board that will convene for the first time on December 12th.

It's easy to get swept up in ballot challenges and questions as to whether the canvassing board is actually impartial, but a greater question in terms of the election's integrity might be the vote discrepancies between the number of votes reported on election day vs. the actual number of ballots counted during the recount process. These missing ballots have been the source of a lot of consternation from the Franken camp over the past two days. Franken's campaign has not accused any person of misdeeds, but has expressed vexation that counties aren't more aggressively trying to find the votes that are missing. In one example, two ballots were found in Lexington, MN, after an election judge called the municipality to ask for a quick search; the two ballots were obtained when an employing shook out a ballot box. In Crystal, there apparently were eight unopened absentee ballots amidst the stacks of opened ballots; of the eight, seven were votes for Franken.

While the Franken campaign continues to push for hundreds of previously disqualified absentee ballots to be counted, Senator Coleman's efforts seem to focus on attacking the process as biased.  First, they challenged the process based on the idea that Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is biased due to his party affiliation, even though he was originally elected in 2006 largely on a platform of making the office non-partisan.  (Ritchie's impartiality has received a vote of confidence, by the way, from Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty).  At the moment, the Coleman campaign is devoting a lot of outcry to the example of Maggie Vertin, who was working as an election judge in one county and as a Franken volunteer in another.

Despite all of the attention going into the recount, due to the extraordinarily high number of challenged ballots it seems unlikely that any meaningful outcome will be available prior to the Canvassing Board's decisions in mid-December.  This whole affair does have several advocates and supporters of Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley calling for instant runoff voting (IRV), which would be a potentially positive end benefit to this otherwise shaky exercise of democracy.

Areas of Focus:

Counts & Recounts, Democratizing Elections (Liberty Tree)

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