MN Sen Recount (UPDATE: Stuart Smalley certified winner, lawsuit forthcoming)

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This is pretty much as I expected.  Optical scanning is extremely accurate.  No hanging chads or such.  Coleman wins the recount without a significant change in the totals.  Franken will have to rely on some sort of litigation.   Perhaps he can get the courts to have Nate Silver declare him the winner.

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If Coleman is challenging undervotes (and we don't know that for sure) it doesn't help Franken one bit.  Assuming those challenges are denied (100% assured) it won't help Franken or change the present totals at all since those votes were not counted for either candidate in the first place.

I know Harry Reid has been making noises about the senate possibly getting involved and seating who they deam the winner, but if Franken is behind when the recount ends, that aint happening for a number of reasons.  One is it would be a PR mistake for obvious reasons.  The other is (presuming Chambliss wins in Georgia) you have a dead cinch Republican filibuster with 41 votes.  Believe me, Republicans are not going to sit back and let one of their own with the most votes get squeezed out  by a Reid power play.  Solid 41 votes I can assure you.

Franken's only shot would be to have the courts mandate a bunch of discarded absentee ballots be added to tip the balance.  Actually, the overwhelming majority of those ballots were legitimately tossed.  Even the ones that the courts could (or could not) include are not necessarily favoring Franken even in the event they have to be included. 

Nothing is for sure but at this point, I'd rather be Coleman in spite of what Nate Silver expects to happen.

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Sam, I don't know why you are even bothering with this.  The great Nate Silver has already said Frankin wins by 27 votes.  Therefore, it's over.  Coleman should concede immediately.

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Get this thing over.  Both sides are beyond ridiculous.

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I thought it was 270.  Doesn't matter however.  It's already been determined that the final results will be Frankin by 27 votes.  You know, regression analysis by the world's foremost statistician.  Just ask him.

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If Coleman wins the recount, the only way Frankin win is for some kind of court ruling in effect giving him the election - doubtful the courts would do anything to overturn a result in which Franken never led in the original result or recount.

The only other possibility would be Reid and his caucus trying to seat Frankin.  That's definitely not happening.  It would be a PR nightmare for Dems but beyond that, assuming Chambliss wins today, that's 41 Republican votes and I guarantee 41 SOLID votes filibustering any blatant power grab by Reid.  Snowe, Collins, Specter would absolutely be on board on this one.

Franken's last hope is some kind of crazy court ruling.  Even that wouldn't go down well considering the count.

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Public reaction would not be good and I doubt President elect Obama would go for it.  It would be such a partisan naked power grab that it would undermine Obama's reach across the divide pledge.  There will be issues down the road where, despite the Democratic margin in the senate, he will need to peal off a few Republicans.  Trying to steal this seat for Frankin would make that harder.  Besides, if Chambliss wins today, Dems aren't going to reach 60 in the senate anyway.  Grabbing Coleman's seat for Al Franken wouldn't be worth the grief.  I doubt it's even being considered.

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I might add that if Martin upsets tonight, Reid will be tempted to grab the seat.  I still think it won't be attempted because peoplewould see it for what it was and the picture is too ugly.

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Lunar, good point.  That is what Michael Barone was saying yesterday.

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The precinct in question was carried by Franken by 6% so we are probably talking about 10 to 12 votes here.  Not a game changer by any means.  However, finding votes at the very end scares me.  Sends me back to King County, Washington in 2006.  They just kept finding Democratic votes until they had the lead.  On the other hand, this is what a recount is supposed to detect, legitimate problems with the count.  I am sure this is on the up and up as the recount seems to have been very orderly.  However, if more votes suddenly appear at the end, I'll start being suspicious.  With optical scanning, new votes will have to be found.  The optical scans have proven too accurate for Franken to win without "new' votes.

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37 votes?  At the end of the count?  The numbers aren't adding up?

I'm sorry.  This doesn't pass the smell taste.

I guess deep down I was expecting something like this.

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Franken's people on Silver's site are claiming that with the 37 votes added to Franken's number from the 171 "found" allots yesterday, they are now only trailing by 13 votes.

Can anyone tell me how they arrived at this number?

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Confirmed that the Franken campaign has just announced they have taken the lead by 22 votes.

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Yeah, it was a "special case" alright.

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I assume Franken's claims are posturing for the coming review of ballots and court challenge.

More campaign BS of which we've already had enough on both sides.

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The Franken campaign says he is up 10 votes.

Uh, yeah.  Sure he is.

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Actually, Franken is up more than 10.  I believe the number is 27 and that number is solid.  Nate Silver said so.

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Thank God the recount is finally 100% completed. 

Expect a news conference by Franken's lawyers within the hour announcing that Franken has finished  in the lead.  I feel sure they will announce that the lead is - -- exactly 27 votes.

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My understanding is that the 10 ballots found today are overseas military ballots.  Just a hunch, but if those ballots are included (and I have no idea if the canvasing board would include them) I'm pretty sure they won't help Franken.  Like I said, just a hunch.

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800 challenges?

Yep, Coleman is toast.  Turns out many more Coleman challenges were Hail Mary like.  

It also turns out that Franken wins regardless of the court ruling on rejected absentee ballots.

I might add that I have no problem with the SOS and the canvasing board.  They appear to have played it down the middle.  Coleman's lead was fool's gold and I bought it until today, but I assumed Coleman had more than a handful of valid challenges relative to Frankin's.

Congrats to Senator elect Frankin.  As it turns out, this race was decided when the original canvasing gave Frankin the pick up of 480 votes prior to the recount.

Topic closed as far as I'm concerned.

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In spite of the way this is going, I will say that the canvassing board has played it straight down the middle.  Even the moveon.org SOS has appeared to be objective as he's chaired the reviews according to what I've seen on their webcam.

All I ever asked was that this thing be conducted fairly and Minn has done a good job IMO.

If this thing got decided by a bunch of partisan county election boards each using different standards in deciding to reject or accept the absentee ballots that weren't originally counted I'd have a major problem.  That could result in Republican county boards using a standard benefitting Coleman and say, Ramsey County using a different standard to benefit Frankin.  That would have made the whole thing a farce.

At least those absentee ballots don't seem to be the deciding factor and that is good.