As we speak, the MNGOP is announcing that it plans to seek “reconciliation” of the state’s vote totals before the recount begins.
The DFL is going to spread a lot of, frankly, BS about this process. Here are the facts. For starters…:
It’s The Law: The DFL is going to portray this to the uniformed (which the media will do their best to ensure the entire state is) as a wholesale disenfranchisement of voters.
The simple fact is, it is the law.
Under Minnesota law, the vote totals and the total number of actual, identified voters – the registered voters that signed in at the polling station – are supposed to be “reconciled”, or shown to be equal, by about six weeks after the election. The deadline this year is December 15.
Naturally, Mark Ritchie has bobbled that job as badly as he has every other facet of his job as Secretary of State and chief executive of our election system. In 2008, it took close to eight months for the reconciliation process to happen.
Which has potentially dire consequences, if you want a clean, accurate recount of an election.
We’ll come back to that.
How Reconciliation Works: If your precinct had 100 voters sign in, and there are 110 ballots, then ten ballots are picked out at random and discarded.
Really. That’s the state law.
Now, you might say “but that disenfranchises the ten voters that got picked out of the pile”. And there’s something to that. But by another token the ten extra votes disenfranchise ten voters in and of themselves; if it happened through fraud, then ten legitimate voters were negated; if through administrative incompetence (because precinct election staff don’t know how to do simple things like tally numbers or test ballot-counters before the election), then those ten ballots are equally disenfranchised, not by decree of Tony Sutton or Tom Emmer, but under state law.
Stupid? Maybe. We’ll come back to that later.
So why bother? Because there very well may be…
More Votes Than People: In 2008, the Minnesota Majority claimed that there were about 40,000 more votes cast than there were identified, signed-in voters in Minnesota. Mark Ritchie – Minnesota’s Secretary of State – said in effect “No, no no!” – it was only somewhere under 30,000 votes.
That’s right. Even Mark Ritchie, the chief executive of our electoral system, admitted that that out of a little over 2.75 million voters, there were nearly 30,000 more votes cast than there were identified, signed-in voters. That’s a little over a percent of the entire voting pool. Over one in a hundred.
That’s over double the margin between the candidates in this year’s governor race.
That’s an awful lot of votes that, at first glance – via incompetence or fraud, and it really doesn’t matter which at this point – seem to have no connection with real, signed-in humans that showed up at the polls.
By Minnesota law, this needs to be taken care of. And it needs to be done before any recount takes place, to make sure that we’re dealing with real numbers, not inflated/mistake-driven/fraudulent ones.
Let’s make sure we re-iterate two things here:
- Discrepancies may or may not be fraud, and it really doesn’t matter what the cause is, because…
- Reconciliation is a legal requirement, regardless.
Are there more votes than identified, actual voters? We don’t know yet. And before we recount the votes for the office of this state’s chief executive, we need to find out.
If there is a surplus of voters, is it fraud? We don’t know – and in a sense, it’s irrelevant to the question. Reconciliation is not a legal tactic; it is the law.
But the recount effort – led by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnusson – has noticed that there seems to be an…
Odd Pattern: There appear to be quite a number of precincts – concentrated in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis Counties – where Tom Emmer grossly underperformed the rest of the GOP ticket, and Mark Dayton significantly overperformed the rest of the DFL’s floundering line-up.
There also are reportedly a very large number of ballots listing nobody but Mark Dayton. As in someone went in to the polls, registered, stood in line…and filled in only Mark Dayton. Nobody else.
So the law calls for reconciliation. Let’s reconcile!
“What a stupid system!”: Perhaps, but you don’t get to pick and choose the laws you want to follow (unless you have really good lawyers and your opposition doesn’t; see OJ Simpson. Or if you fight a legal battle with furious intensity and your opponent does not; see Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman).
Don’t like the law? Change it. Better yet, replace it – with a photo ID system by which poll staff can match real voters with real registrations. And get rid of vouching, and maybe same-day registration. Why shouldn’t voting, the most important of our civil rights, be reserved for those who pay enough attention to voting to actually register in advance?
But that’s a discussion for another day.
Naturally, Mark Ritchie has bobbled that job as badly as he has every other facet of his job as Secretary of State and chief executive of our election system. In 2008, it took close to eight months for the reconciliation process to happen.
So, do we know how well this process worked when Mary Kiffmeyer was in office? Better? Worse?
Why shouldn’t voting, the most important of our civil rights, be reserved for those who pay enough attention to voting to actually register in advance?
I would go even further – you can only vote if you are paying property and income taxes.
Mitch,
Thanks for this great post. I had no idea about the law’s requirements for reconciliation.
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Odd Pattern: There appear to be quite a number of precincts – concentrated in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis Counties – where Tom Emmer grossly underperformed the rest of the GOP ticket, and Mark Dayton significantly overperformed the rest of the DFL’s floundering line-up.
Tony Sutton: “Something doesn’t smell right about this.”
AIN’T THAT THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!
Mark Ritchie did not “bobble that job”. He performed as expected. He did exactly what George Soros’ SOS Project intended, which is pervert the political process and win offices for progressive candidates.
This nation is under attack from within.
There ought to be a THREE-WAY reconciliation. The number of actual ballots should match the number of people who actually signed the register and both should match the machine count of ballots. That should have been done at the time the polls closed and, if off by more than a few, prompted an immediate investigation– not that such can happen with Ritchie in charge. And yes, this process worked far better when Mary Kiffmeyer was in charge.
The only part of this I object to is the selection of RANDOM ballots to be discarded. I think that “anomalous” ballots should be discarded first. Otherwise, the ballot-box stuffers win by diluting the real vote.
Mr. D, you have laid out the case for demanding a thorough FACTCHECKING.
I’ve called Mary Kiffmeyer and she told me she would have done a better job. Do you want her number to verify that?
Well, I won’t give it to you.
Read entire GOP press release/statement. It seems pretty straightforward. Ms. Kiffmeyer had a procedure for verifying the correct number of votes cast matched the correct number of ballots used (or something to that effect). Soro’s boy Ritchie ended that program, giving us Crazy Al Franken (“the main reason I snorted coke was to keep the other coke snorters awake”) and maybe Dayton.
Question, did the Communist Party USA endorse Ritchie again in 2010? I know they did back in 2006. Best voting system in the country my ass.
How is that Ritchie got reelected with these shenanigans? Seems to me the GOP just isn’t making the case, if it’s this obvious of stuff.
Now ballots can’t be sorted by voter, of course, but I would suggest that not only should random ballots be discarded if there are more ballots than voters, but also any precinct that records more ballots than voters gets audited and the election staff gets invited NOT to come back next time.
I read the “stupid system” message a few times, but I disagree.
It shares one purpose with the electoral college nationally: it limits corrupt and/or stupid regions from influencing an election more than their voter population would normally allow. And I like that.
Why wasn’t there reconciliation before the 08 recount?
Stuff like this happens because Minnesotans keep telling themselves we have the best voting system in the country, therefore problems like this cannot actually be happening.
The way to remedy this is not just to toss out 10 random ballots this election-we need to penalize the precinct 10 ballots on the next election. That way the failure carries over, and the election judges that (in all likelihood) stuffed the ballot for the DFL this year will get to count for less votes next cycle.
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What this would do is force the state to announce an official vote count for each candidate + undifferentiated overvotes for each polling place. The officials at each pollimg place would have to be on the record as stating, in writing, that their vote count was reconciled and the reason any over votes were not counted. Should have done this in 2008.
Over the past few days, I have heard more than a couple of reports that several thousand ballots only had one oval filled in – for Mad Mark Dayton.
That, in itself, smells corrupt.
Only way Emmer is going to win is to prove massive fraud. This process of checking the number of signed in voters vs. the number of Ballots cast might just shed some light on it.
Cali has re-elected Governor Moonbeam. Should Mark Dayton eventually be sworn in what should his nick name be?
I’d vote for “Dipshit!”
Mark Daydream?
Cali has re-elected Governor Moonbeam. Should Mark Dayton eventually be sworn in what should his nick name be?
Arthur, as in the Dudley Moore character. Although he’s much less amusing.
Should Mark Dayton eventually be sworn in what should his nick name be?
Short Timer!!
♩♫ When you get stuck between the moon and Ramsey County . . . ♫♬
Cali has re-elected Governor Moonbeam. Should Mark Dayton eventually be sworn in what should his nick name be?
Governor JimBeam.
Swiftee and Terry win. Bravo, gentlemen.
I can only humbly submit “Upperclass Twit Of The Year”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss
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