Update: Franken and Coleman Vote Count Timeline

Posted by Phoenix Woman, Firedoglake at 9:02 AM on November 29, 2008.

I've decided to channel Emptywheel and start constructing a timeline of sorts for the Franken-Coleman recount. Take a look at this handy chart compiled by Twin Cities blogger Jeff Rosenberg. It shows the ratio of challenges to ballots counted.

Notice that for most of the first three days of the recount, the ratios for each campaign stayed between three and five challenged ballots per every ten thousand ballots cast. Those three days were the period where Coleman's officially-announced lead over Franken was shrinking. (See here, here and here for details.) They were also in the period just before the Coleman campaign went on a frivolous-challenge jag in order to artificially (and temporarily) goose the official recount numbers in their favor, and the Franken campaign felt compelled to play tit-for-tat just to make sure the publicly-announced faked-up Coleman "lead" didn't get too high.

This is why Jeff Rosenberg is no longer publicizing the "official" vote total:  It's not only inaccurate, it only serves to set up a situation where Coleman and his people will be loudly screaming "We wuz robbed!" if -- or rather, when -- all his frivolous challenges are rejected and the challenged ballots are allowed back into the recount and wipe out his lead.

Tagged as: minnesota, al franken, election '08, norm coleman, recount, senate race

Phoenix Woman is a regular blogger for FireDogLake