Minnesota's Vote for Senator 2008

Minnesotans will likely not know whether to address Al Franken or Norm Coleman as Senator until about December 19. What was once a comfortable but somewhat close lead of 725 votes in favor of Senator Coleman the morning after the election has dwindled to 206 votes separating Senator Coleman and Mr. Franken. What happened? Was it, as conservative columnist John Lott, Jr., insists in his Fox News editorial, a case of fraudulent dealings during election day to ensure a Franken win? Or was it more likely tired election officials making mistakes when calling in or typing in results to the office or website of the Secretary of State?

This became an important issue to me when Ward One in Two Harbors was named as the precinct reporting the largest error in reported results, 246 votes in Al Franken's favor, to be exact. Our eldest daughter votes in Ward One; my husband and I vote in Ward Two. Ward One borders Lake Superior and the old downtown district. It consists of two senior citizen and low income apartment buildings and a number of private homes, some of which date to the early 1900's. Some of the oldest churches in Two Harbors are in this Ward. The total number of eligible adults who voted in the election in Ward One alone was 526 but only 523 cast a vote for Minnesota Senator. Not a bad showing for a city which has a population of 3613.

I knew Two Harbors and most of Lake County, not to mention most of northeastern Minnesota, are strongholds of support for candidates of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party caucus for Lake County tends to fill half of the high school cafeteria; the Republican Party caucus rents the Two Harbors Community Center, a smaller venue. Yet I could not come to Mr. Lott's conclusion: that the people I see in our local grocery store and my daughters serve at their fast food work place would intentionally misreport vote tallies to get their candidate in office. The suspicion was planted in my mind, though, and I had to follow the story. I tried to conceive of ways the election results might have been skewed to favor Al Franken over Norm Coleman.

The electoral process had changed in minor ways from eight years ago when I served as an election judge and two years ago when we voted in the election that put Governor Tim Pawlenty back into office. This year we filled in the ballot bubbles with black ink pens. In previous years, we were given pencils to mark the ballots. Whether the voters used black ink pens or pencils, 246 votes could not be explained by a difference in writing instruments.

This year, our ward had some new election judges. In previous years, the Democratic party judges were two ladies who seemed to be fixtures in Ward Two. The Republican Party judges changed from election to election. I wondered if Ward One had a turnover of election officials.

In past years, our ballots were given to us in gray plastic sleeves. We would go into the voting booth and remove the ballot to mark it. We would then slide the ballot back into the sleeve and carry it to the electronic vote counter, where we tipped the gray sleeve so that the ballot slid into the counter. When I served as election judge, the voters slid their ballots into a gray lockbox. The accumulated ballots were then taken to the counter in the judge's chambers of the county courthouse at the conclusion of the day to be fed into the machine. This year our ballots were not in plastic sleeves. I have to admit feeling a little self conscious walking out of the voting booth with my ballot in hand in plain sight for the minute before I fed it into the electronic counter.

On November 12, the Wall Street Journal Opinion page called Two Harbors a "liberal outpost" and thought the miscommunication excuse "odd" since other race tally totals did not vary from what was reported election night. So were Al Franken's 246 votes manufactured out of thin air or were they the result of an honest error?

I asked an active member of the Lake County Republican Party about the incorrect numbers. He told me the county canvass was held on Monday, November 10. That examination found the incorrect number was the result of the last digit in Ward One's tally for Al Franken not being typed in. The number 27 was entered instead of 273. He affirmed the correct number was supplied to the Secretary of State's website the morning after the election when the paperwork was being checked in the county auditor's office.

What happens now? All of the county tallies must be certified. Only then may a manual recount of every ballot in the county begin. Lake County's ballots are being kept in a locked vault until that time. A maximum of three employees of the auditor's office can gain entrance. Two employees must be present to remove anything from the vault.

When the county gets the official word, two teams each consisting of three judges will begin to count the nearly 7000 ballots cast in Lake County. This could begin on November 19. The two major parties will be represented on each team and the Franken and Coleman campaigns will have overseers to challenge any ballot they feel shows the voter's intent but was not recorded by the electronic counter for some reason. These individuals will likely have to spend six to eight hours at this job. Only after all 87 counties have done this and any ballots which are challenged are decided by the State Canvassing Board will Norm Coleman or Al Franken be able to declare victory.