| Recount drama hits Mille Lacs |
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By Joel Stottrup Mille Lacs County had its own piece of the drama last Friday in the Coleman-Franken U.S. Senate race recount. But even with some excitement that day, at the end of the recount Coleman was still well ahead of Franken in at least Mille Lacs. Mille Lacs gave 5,827 votes to Coleman and 4,791 to Franken when the recount was done. Coleman lost 22 votes in the Mille Lacs recount from the 5,849 votes he received in the general election. Franken lost six votes in the recount, as he had 4,797 Mille Lacs votes in the election. There were a significant number of challenged votes (37) in the Mille Lacs Coleman-Franken recount. Each side had representatives, or observers, who could challenge a ballot result. Franken representatives challenged 26 Coleman votes in Mille Lacs and Coleman representatives challenged 11 Franken votes. The big recount Each of the 87 counties in Minnesota are recounting the ballots cast in the race between Republican U.S. Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Democratic Al Franken. Coleman eked out an approximately 700-vote win over Franken during the Nov. 4 election, enough for a recount. Coleman protested having a recount, later apologizing for the protest. He said the protest had come at the end of 36 hours without sleep. The Mille Lacs County recount in the Coleman-Franken race began at 9 a.m. Friday in the county commissioners room in the Mille Lacs courthouse in Milaca. It didn’t finish until 6 p.m. By then, most employees had left the courthouse for the day. Adding to the Mille Lacs recount atmosphere was a visit by Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie before the ballot counting began. With only part of the state’s votes recounted in the Coleman-Franken race as of Monday morning, Coleman’s lead had shrunk to 120 votes. One of the big issues remaining in the process of determining the winner, is what to do with the absentee ballots that were rejected. So far they are not going to be counted. But the Franken side won a court victory that the names and addresses of the people whose absentee ballots were rejected were public information. “Frivolous challenges” The recount seemed to go along without too much contention by mid morning in Mille Lacs. But checking in with Mille Lacs Auditor-Treasurer Phil Thompson afterward, revealed that the atmosphere had heated up between Franken and Coleman observers by day’s end at the Mille Lacs site. The mix of observers included Len Zolna, an attorney representing the Franken side. He listed his residence as Anoka County. A couple of the observers for the Coleman side had come a distance — Heather Flick, from San Francisco, and Michael Escoto from Sacramento. Both, like other observers, spent plenty of time watching the ballots that had been cast for Franken. Another observer who had come a few miles was Mimi Asnes, on behalf of the Franken side. She wasn’t from the Iron Range, but said she had been up there helping out with the Franken campaign. Many of the observers came from the Twin Cities. Franken observer Jeff Strand came from Princeton. About an hour into the recount Friday morning, Thompson showed an example of a ballot where a challenge came from Zolna. The ballot showed the oval below the Franken name filled in and then crossed out and then the oval filled in for Coleman. Zolna initially challenged the ballot, contesting that the voter’s intent was finally to vote for Coleman. Zolna then scrutinized it more closely and removed the challenge. But by day’s end, the challenge was reinstated by the Coleman observers. “There was much more contesting than yesterday,” Thompson said. He was comparing the Friday Coleman-Franken recount in Mille Lacs to the recount of the Mille Lacs votes in the Alison Krueger-Lisa Fobbe District 16 State Senate race. Actually, the Krueger-Fobbe recount in Mille Lacs last Thursday, ended up with no challenged ballots. “They made a lot of frivolous challenges,” Thompson said of the observers with the Franken-Coleman campaigns during the Mille Lacs recount. Thompson said the frivolous challenging “got worse as the day went on,” and that “they tried to get even with each other.” Sometimes there would be a “couple teeny pin dots” on the ballot and someone would then challenge the ballot, Thompson said. Thompson explained how the oval for Coleman was filled in on one ballot and then there was a pin dot mark on the Franken side. A Franken representative claimed the voter’s intent was for Franken, Thompson said. Or a ballot would bring a challenge if the voter had placed an X over the oval rather than fill it in, or the mark didn’t fill an oval in completely, Thompson said. If mistakes were found, that is not unusual, Thompson told everyone prior to the recount. He explained that it is usually because a voter did not mark their ballot properly. Sorters made separate ballot piles for Franken, Coleman and other. Dean Barkley, who ran on the Independence party ticket, was the third person in the race. He had the smallest vote fraction of the three. Thompson’s deputy recount assistant was Laurie Tinklenberg, from his office at the courthouse. The other assistants in the recount Friday were Page Township clerk Stephanie Drayna, South Harbor Township Clerk Lori Stalker, Karrie Roeschlein with the city of Wahkon and Ann Heutmaker, a Kathio Township election judge. Minnesota Secretary of State Ritchie arrived shortly before the recount began in Mille Lacs Friday. He has asked that all of the state’s counties have their recount results into his office by Dec. 5. The state canvassing board will begin meeting Dec. 16 to examine the challenged ballots. The canvassing board will also discuss the issue of the rejected absentee ballots, Ritchie said. The goal is to have the final results of the Coleman-Franken recount completed by Christmas, Ritchie said. “We’re going over the system with a fine tooth comb,” he added. Ritchie said his office is interested in more than getting the recount done fairly, accurately, and with transparency. He said he plans to also examine if the whole voting system in the state can be improved. Some ideas for doing that, he said, are to have more election judges on election day and have more split shifts for these judges. Ritchie said the reporters who have been looking at the process have also contributed in examining the system. Thompson, after the recount, talked about how absentee ballots can become rejected. He explained that when people fill out an application to receive an absentee ballot, they must print their name and address and place their signature on the application. Then when they fill out the absentee ballot, they place it in the secrecy sleeve and place that in the supplied, prepaid envelope. The name and signature of both the voter and the witness must be placed on the outside of the envelope, Thompson said. The purpose of the witness is to have an eligible voter in the state attest that the person’s whose name is on the envelope is the same person who voted. If this is not complete, then it opens up to possible fraud where someone steals absentee ballots from mailboxes and fills them out, Thompson said. Twenty-seven absentee ballots were rejected in Mille Lacs County and most of those were because they did not have the required signatures on the envelope, according to Thompson. He said those rejected absentee ballot envelopes were kept sealed. Comments (0)
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| Campus Notes, February 4, 2010 |
Princeton Union Eagle
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