Minn. Senate race could hinge on scanning machine mistakes
Fears of e-voting glitches in the November election are still not over. The outcome of the Minnesota Senate race--which could give the Democrats a firmer grasp on power in Washington--may depend on whether scanning machines made mistakes two weeks ago when tabulating ballots.
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman holds a lead of only about 200 votes over his main opponent, Democrat Al Franken, but a hand recount that begins Wednesday could show that a few thousand votes were mistakenly rejected.
With Coleman's lead under a margin of 0.5 percent of the more than 2.9 million votes cast in the Minnesota senate race on November 4, the state automatically begins a hand recount of every ballot.
Minnesota used optical scanning machines to read paper ballots, and enough ballots could have been mistakenly rejected by the machines to alter the outcome of the race, said Beth Fraser, director of governmental affairs for the Minnesota secretary of state's office. The office estimates that as many as two votes for every 1,000 cast--or as many as 6,000--may have been mistakenly rejected.
The optical scanners would have rejected ballots that were not filled out correctly--for instance, if a voter circled a candidate's name rather than filling in the bubble next to the name, Fraser said. However, Minnesota law mandates that any vote in which the voter's intention is clear must be counted. In other words, the law is more liberal than the machines, and a manual recount could permit votes to be counted that a machine would reject.
"We have a pretty clear statute of what counts as a vote," Fraser said.
Starting Wednesday, election officials in 106 locations throughout the state will start sorting through ballots, paying particular attention to those that were rejected to decide whether they should be counted.
"It's kind of a consensus process," Fraser said.
Representatives for both of the two major candidates will be at every table, she said, and they are free to challenge the election officials' judgment. If anyone is left unsatisfied about the status of a vote, it will be put aside for the state canvassing board to review.
Officials aim to finish the hand recount by December 5. The state canvassing board--which is chaired by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and includes Minnesota Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson, and District Judges Kathleen Gearin and Edward Cleary--will reconvene on December 16 with the goal of getting in the final results by December 19.
While the optical scanning machines may have rejected some crucial votes, Fraser said the machines are the best option for counting votes.
"It speeds up the counting but gives us the paper ballots to count on, so the results are fully auditable," she said.
Tallying mistakenly rejected votes is unlikely to clear the controversy surrounding the recount, however. Franken's campaign filed a lawsuit on November 13 requesting that the names of voters who cast invalidated absentee ballots be made public, so those ballots can be reviewed by the canvassing board as well. A hearing on the case is set for Wednesday morning, after the recount starts.
Other incidents have called into question some of the results, such as an allegation the Minneapolis director of elections accidentally left 32 absentee ballots in her car. Additionally, Coleman has called into question the neutrality of Secretary of State Ritchie, who is a Democrat.
Stephanie Condon is a staff writer for CNET News focused on the intersection of technology and politics. She is based in Washington, D.C. E-mail Stephanie.
I have much more faith in the impartiality of the optical vote counting machines in Minnesota than any count done by humans after the fact. Hand recounts are an artifact of a bygone era where the votes were counted by hand in the first place and subject to error or bias. I suppose the recounts will be conducted in rooms lit by kerosene lamps and recorded with quill pens, too. Time for the "progressive" state of Minnesota to join the 21st century.
Finally you have a president who has some brains and is not a phoney, and yet you complain and whine. Just sad. Then, in your next breath, you will talk about freedom, love of your country, justice for all. Freedom to be absolute morons? Love for the other fools who agree with you and hatred for everyone else?
Thankfully MN doesn't have to worry about "hanging chads" when it comes to voting. However accessibility was an issue at a few locations. How can they have voting booths where wheelchairs cannot gain entry! That blew my mind.
No, you've got that backwards. That's EXACTLY why their vote should be thrown away. I've voted at several different places in Minnesota over the past few years, and I have never, ever found the clearly-printed instructions to be confusing. I believe the usual options are either draw a line between two dashes, or fill in a little oval completely, both so simple, 4-year-olds could do it, if they know how to read of course.
There are clearly-defined rules for holding elections and casting ballots, and those that choose to disobey the rules, either intentionally or due to ignorance (if you are ignorant, it's because you choose to be, therefore it's your fault), your vote will not and should not be counted. This is why two states' worth of democratic primary election results were thrown out, because they didn't follow the rules and decided to hold elections early. Too many people in this country think that personal failures should be rewarded, which is one of our biggest problems. If you failed to follow the instructions, it's nobody's fault but your own. If you were confused on how to properly vote, election officials were there to help you if you had just asked. If you did not properly vote, your vote does not count. These rules of voting should not be changed for a mere recount.
And another thing. If there were absentee ballots that were submitted properly, but not counted due to an election official's error, I'm all in favor of counting those. That's because the voter followed the rules properly. However, if once again, voters did not take responsibility by making sure their ballots were in on time, they do not deserve to have their vote counted, because they didn't follow the rules. Any ballots that came in once the polls were closed are invalid and should not be counted. Period.
We need to stop rewarding irresponsibility and laziness, or else we are in for a world of hurt. Oh wait, that's right, we're already there.
You supposedly love your country and the ideals it was built upon, but then self-serving and mypoic thought, along with a solid baseline of pure idiocy leads to the most whacky and paranoid thinking I have ever seen.
ivorycruncher, I'm with you.
For those that consider these people less deserving or stupid, you might consider viewing the situation a bit more charitably. There are always older voters and those that have physical issues with hand motion or eyesight that could have prevented them from filling the form out correctly. Perhaps there were language issues and they didn't understand what was expected. The line of attack is that since these people did not fill out a form perfectly, there vote is worth less than others. I'm sorry, but the Constitution makes no provision for how good you are at filling out a computer form.
Finally, I don't believe we are going down a rat hole like in Florida. Minnesota has well defined laws that govern the recount process and a known set of rules to judge ballots. Florida in 2000 never did a full recount after the Supreme Court decision, leaving voters in perpetual questioning of the results. MN is doing exactly the opposite - counting every single vote to determine the intent of the citizens. It's always possible that candidate lawsuits will cloud this process, but it's going along just fine so far.
These machines have to be certified too. I know in California some counties still use (some of the older ES&S) machines that wouldn't be allowed as new because their certification audits failed (error rates were high), but their counties can't afford new machines. Even when there are no permanent physical problems with the machines, they can sometimes fail to record a vote. These machines are like any other piece of equipment. I think we've all had our own problems with copiers, FAX machines, ticket dispensers, etc.
Back when I took the SAT using an optical scanning for, we could request a hand-check of the form if we doubted the accuracy of the score. I forgot what the fee was, but it wasn't ridiculous.
Perhaps a better title for the article would be "Minn. Senate race could hinge on voter mistakes."
The Republicans seem to whipping up their low I.Q. faithful into a frenzy with bogus stories like this. It belongs with "Iraq had weapons of mass destruction" and "Obama was Palin Around with Terrorists" as examples of events that only exist in the alternative ideological universe that many Republicans inhabit.
I hope that you will print a retraction.
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by pwandmaker
November 19, 2008 2:41 PM PST
- does anyone else see the hilarity of this?
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by jezzur
November 20, 2008 12:57 AM PST
- I agree whole-heartedly. Just this "Dems are dumb"... "no, republicans are dumb". I get the impression that the republicans are probably a bit less informed, fearful, more often racist on the whole, but there are also some very intelligent people who just think about the world differently to me. I can't help but notice that people in the US so often talk with pride about a country that is severely flawed, but then pounce on anyone who criticises. The wasted energy of this bickering, constant paranoia, and ridiculous election displays is immeasurable, but it will never change because people are living in pixie-land thinking US is the best place on Earth. It just isn't, and even if it was, you would want to make it even better yeah?
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by jezzur
November 20, 2008 1:36 PM PST
- oops...i meant the fundamentally flawed nature of votes. That is, that if everyone votes for themselves, you can easily have a situation where if 51% of the population is aligned, then the other 49 percent suffer. THe politicians fight over the median 5 percent of votes... if they can capture them and not be too retarded they can keep power.
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(23 Comments)it seems that a country that continually harps on about being the planets greatest democracy can't quite get the simple act of casting a vote?
ahhh americans, a never ending source of humour for the rest of the world.
Criticism and self-criticism is essential to move forward. That makes us learn. Moreover, not being selfish is a good idea, and democracy is flawed in itself just for the fundamentally nature of every vote counted. It can easily lead to situations where 51% of a country is laughing while the other 49% live in squalor. If you are happy with that, you arent human.