MNpublius.com

Republicans are really in trouble if Tim Pawlenty decides not to run for re-election (and most people we talk to don’t expect him to) because they have little to no bench in Minnesota right now.  One prospect being tossed around in GOP circles is a gubernatorial run by Jim Ramstad.  But a note in the Politico this morning might splash some cold water on that theory:

Rep. Jim Ramstad’s name is bouncing around as a possible “drug czar” — the name given the head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Ramstad, a Minnesota Republican, is in recovery himself and has been a longtime proponent of treatment for drug abuse…

…”It’s gratifying to hear Jim’s name being mentioned for drug czar,” said Ramstad spokesman Dean Peterson. “Jim has worked in a bipartisan way for 27 years on anti-drug efforts in Congress and the Minnesota Senate. And as a recovering person, he’s worked every day to help those suffering the ravages of chemical addiction.”

Judging from Ramstad’s office’s warm response, I’d guess that the soon-to-be-former Congressman would be interested in the job. Here’s hoping he gets it. Not only would Ramstad do a great job, it’d take away the MN GOP’s strongest non-Pawlenty gubernatorial candidate.

Michael Brodkorb thinks its disgusting that the Franken campaign is fighting to make sure that the absentee ballot of an 84 year old Beltrami woman is counted.

Huh?

The woman’s absentee ballot was apparently rejected because her signature, which was altered when she had a stroke, didn’t make the signature the county had on file. The Franken campaign is trying to make sure that her ballot, along with potentially hundreds of others around the state, are counted.

So tell me Michael, why shouldn’t this woman’s vote count?  Why shouldn’t the Franken campaign fight on her behalf?

When the recount begins next week, the fate of contested ballots will be in the hands of the State Canvassing Board.  By statute, the Board consists of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, two Supreme Court Justices chosen by Ritchie and two District Court Judges also chosen by Ritchie.

If you believed conservative hacks like Michael Brodkorb and Katherine Kersten, who think Ritchie is on a mission from God to throw the election to Al Franken, you would have expected that Ritchie would have chosen the most partisan DFLers in the state judiciary.  But that is not what happened.

Ritchie essentially punted.  He let Chief Justice Eric Magnuson pick the two Supreme Court Justices and he let Ramsey County District Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin pick the two District Court Judges. Magnuson, a very partisan Republican who is a long time friend and former law partner of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, picked himself and partisan Republican Justice G. Barry Anderson. Gearin picked herself and Judge Edward Cleary (lawyers I have spoken have faith that Gearin and Cleary will be impartial). That leaves us with a Board made up of two partisan Republicans, one partisan Democrat who is bending over backwards to be non-partisan, and two independents. Hmmm….

What is the significance of these selections? Aside from the obvious, (Norm is looking at a much more friendly Canvassing Board than was expected) it means that the attacks from hacks like Brodkorb and Kersten have gotten inside Ritchie’s head. Why pick two of the most partisan Republican members of the Supreme Court? Why not pick Justice Alan Page or even the more independent Justice Helen Meyer? My guess is that Ritchie was trying to appease his right wing critics by appointing Republicans to the Board. It won’t work. Brodkorb, Kersten, et al, will feel emboldened to attack now that their efforts have borne fruit. It will get worse for Ritchie, not better. And its really a shame too, because the guy hasn’t done a thing wrong in this whole process. Until yesterday, I was proud of our Secretary of State. Now, I’m worried.

Fivethirtyeight runs the numbers on the recount and their findings are…well…complicated.

Basically, there is a very good chance that Franken actually won the election (We need to be clear in our terminology. Franken would not win the “recount,” as that is not a separate contest.  If the canvassing procedure or the recount results in a Franken lead, it means he won the election on November 4th.)

As with most things posted on Fivethirtyeight, this post is a must read.

Coleman’s current lead (which could, and probably will, change as canvassing continues) is 239 votes.  That’s 239 votes out of almost 3,000,000 million cast.

When we get to the recount, we can expect that another 6,000 votes will be added to the total.  Why?

As many as 6,000 votes which didn’t count in Tuesday’s election for US Senator in Minnesota could count in the upcoming recount.

Joe Mansky, director of elections for Ramsey County, says that in any election, as many as 2 in every 1,000 ballots are “spoiled,” that is, someone makes a mistake like putting a checkmark in the circle instead of filling it in.

The machine rejects those ballots, and normally, they’re never counted.

But in a recount, those ballots are reviewed, and if the election judge can determine what the voter intended, the vote could still count.

And in a race with almost 3,000,000 voters, that potentially means 6,000 uncounted votes.

That means that if Coleman’s lead stays exactly where it is now (and it probably won’t) Franken would need just 54% of those 6,000 votes in order to pass Coleman.

By the way, for those of you out there thinking that recounts never change the outcome of the election, you only need to look back two years to find that you are wrong. In the 2004 Washington gubernatorial race, Republican candidate Dino Rossi led after the initial count. A recount, however, resulted in the discovery of several uncounted ballots and that led to a narrow win for Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Rossi’s lead after the initial balloting: 261 votes, a bigger lead than Coleman has now by 22 votes.

From Newsweek:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f — -ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

I am so glad Barack Obama is the next President of the United States.