After looking at hundreds of challenged ballots it is looking more like Al Franken will win

I have studied the numbers in the Minnesota race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman very closely, and while I was always confident that Franken did have a chance, I would have had a hard time saying that things were looking bright for him these past couple of weeks. Tonight however I feel confident that Al Franken is the odds on favorite to win after the canvassing board decides on the challenged ballots.

The http://senaterecount.startribune.com/">Star Tribune website has a "Franken Coleman ballot Challenge" in which you can view many of the ballots that have been challenged by both campaigns and vote on who they should be counted for. I looked at a 10% sample of the 6,655 challenges that were made by the two campaigns and I found that there seems to be significantly more votes for Franken in the pile of challenged ballots than there are for Coleman.

Now I will make no secret of the fact that I want Franken to win this thing, but I do have credentials for analyzing this recount in an unbiased manner. I work in the survey research field, every year my department captures literally millions of pages of surveys many of which are setup in similar fashion to our ballots. I have spent literally thousands of hours looking at survey data, and much of that time involved figuring out the intent of the person who filled the survey out. In addition to my experience in survey researh, I also have experience with working on election related issues. As a college student I was heavily involved in the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) as the Democracy Task Force Leader which meant my focus was on election reform, and I have quite a good understanding of Minnesota election law as a result of that work.

I analyzed the ballots based off both Minnesota law and my own experiences in judging the intent of those filling out forms. I held both Franken and Coleman votes to the exact same standard, and I have confidence that the judges will agree with at least 90% of my decisions as on the vast majority of ballots the intent was clear. Now there were a small number of ballots in which the intent is questionable and in those cases the judges on the canvassing board may rule differently than I would, but considering that there were questionable ballots on both sides and I used the same standard no matter the candidate I don't believe this will make a huge impact on the margins.

One thing that I can not be entirely sure of however is whether my sample was a good representation of the state as a whole. I do know one thing however, and that is through looking at the Congressional races on each ballot that my sample was not all coming from one part of the state. There were ballots from every Congressional district in the state all mixed together so at the very least we know that the ballots were not all concentrated in one part of the state, which probably means a more representative sample although we can not be certain of that.

That being said however Franken was doing very well in the ballots I analyzed. Coleman started with a lead of 192 votes, but as I looked at the ballots I saw Franken was getting more ballots in the votes that I looked at. As I examined more ballots the lead started jumping back and forth between Franken and Coleman despite the fact that Franken had started with a significant deficit, but by the time I finished the 10% sample the numbers were looking very good for Franken and very bad for Coleman.

With 10% of the challenged ballots examined (interestingly out of 6655 challenged ballots, that makes a sample of 666), I found 279 votes for Coleman, 319 for Franken, and 68 which would not be counted for either of those candidates. The Star Tribune says that gives Franken a 208 vote lead with a 214 vote margin of error. That certainly looks very good for Franken, in fact it looks a little too good and I would be pretty surprised if that margin does not get tighter once all the ballots are examined. While in the end it may be tighter however, if the Star Tribune gave me a good representative sample with those 10% of the challenged ballots I looked at then things are looking very good for Franken, and I am much more optimistic about his chances tonight than I was when I woke up this morning.

THAT WE NEED A COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF THE VOTING ROLLS

corresponding Coleman loss.

I hope this becomes a blue seat again in Minnesota.

Go, Al.

And Al is as bedrock decent as Coleman is hopelessly pukey.

:toast:

:toast:

by the tribune no?

Crossing my fingers...

What is clear is that my sample does come from several different parts of the state, and by the way that they were mixed up it appears to be a pretty random sample, I can not be certain of that however as I don't know how the Star Tribune determines what order the ballots appear in. I would not write my predictions in stone yet, but what I have seen is looking good for Franken.

the congress and then the republican party will continue to fight it
until after Jan 20th

Really unbelievable that's it is gonna be this close.

I'm banking on the fact that Franken, before he joined in on the challenge tit-for-tat, was challenging more under-votes than anything........ or votes that wouldn't have gone for Coleman anyway. In other words, Franken's challenges have had less of an impact on Coleman's total. Therefore Coleman's total won't rise as fast when Farnken's challenges are thrown out as some will swing toward "noe of the above" or Barkley.

On the flip side, Coleman's challenges were frivolous and part of a "strategy" from the get-go. When these challenges are thrown out they will mostly, if not all, go to Franken's total.

What the hell is wrong with MN that they can't get those goddamned votes counted???

Hand recounts take a long time, but it is the most accurate vote counting method. I am very grateful that we have this system, as while it may be time consuming it is also one of the most transparent systems in the nation.

And as far as your question, the canvassing board will probably announce a winner by the end of the month.

If they are representative (and they would be if you randomly selected the 666 ballots that you looked at), then Franken will win.

:party:

It's well appreciated by this Wisconsin native and Al Franken well wisher.

Or we're in the End Times, you see.

:)

:kick:

I have now examined 904 ballots of those Coleman has received 372 votes, Franken 441 votes, with 91 for neither candidate. That gives Franken a lead of 316 votes with a margin of error of 180 votes. Yes Franken is now outside the margin of error by a large margin, and has been outside that margin of error for a long time now. As I look at more ballots from so many different parts of the state I am also becoming more confident that this is a representative sample...In other words I can now say with a high degree of confidence that Al Franken will be the next Senator from Minnesota.

408 Coleman, 489 Franken, 103 other. That gives Franken a lead of 347 votes with a margin of error of 169. It sounds too good to be true, but it looks like Norm is about to get his ass handed to him by the canvassing board.

Say goodbye Norm, your ballot challenges are crap.

manufacturers?

It's my understanding that this is a total recount, by hand, including many ballots that were originally run through opical scanner voting machines.

Any discrepancies show up, that you're aware of?

There were a few votes that got missed on some of the older machines, but it was a small number and it only happened in cases in which the voter did not make a thick enough mark on the ballot. There was no electronic voting machine fraud, that happens in states that do not have recounts. We have protections against voting machine fraud so ES&S wouldn't dare rig our elections because they would be caught if they did.

It's interesting to know, because I'm sure I've read about other states, and other elections, where similar optical scan voting machines were used, with very dubious results.