U.S. Senate recount

[This story first appeared in the 31 December 2008 edition of the Weekly Report.]

At a press conference on Wednesday, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said that the state's voting tabulators don't really have an established error rate, but Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky told the Pioneer Press that on their machines, about two of every thousand ballots get miscounted, which would extrapolate to 5,800 votes statewide.

The ES&S (Election Systems & Software) Model 100 voting tabulator (M100), which tallied the votes in most Minnesota counties, would have missed ballots that are marked incorrectly but still constitute legally valid votes: marks like X's and circles may have not have been tallied by the M100, and it's also possible for the M100 to have a dirty optical lens, harming its accuracy.

Word has already ricocheted around Internet voting sites about various problems with the M100. Last week a Michigan election official said the M100 incorrectly tabulated test vote counts. Oakland County Clerk/Register of Deeds Ruth Johnson sent a letter to the federal Election Assistance Commission saying that "ES&S determined that the primary issue was dust and debris build-up on the sensors inside the M-100" tabulator. "This has impacted the Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) settings for the two Contact Image Sensors (CIS)."

California's Secretary of State sponsored an investigation of the source code of ES&S Unity 3.0.1.1, the voting system which runs the M100, carried out by atsec information security corporation (yes, their name is all lower-case). Check out the report, (PDF) which concluded that the PCMCIA memory cards can be easily swapped from the machines (which have easily picked locks) and the specs for the data structure on the cards don't match what actually gets written. There are a variety of other flaws in the code design that atsec has discovered.

For California, Freeman Craft McGregor Group also performed a hacker-style "Red Team" test on Unity and discovered a variety of problems (PDF). More about California's investigation here.

Meanwhile, Anoka and Dakota counties use Diebold AccuVote OS scanners to count ballots; this device was memorably hacked in the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy [video]. More details about the M100 and the Diebold system can be found at the election tech blog Brad Blog and at Wired.com's Threat Level blog.

[This story first appeared in the 7 November 2008 PIM Weekly Report.]

The outsider ethos that has plagued Al Franken since the inception of his candidacy two years ago now manifests itself in an even uglier fashion: casting doubt on Minnesota's election process.

For 30-year New Yorker Franken, and the non-Minnesota crew who have been with him through a best-selling book, a failed national radio show and now what appears to be a lost bid for a U.S. Senate seat, there are election day fraud myths rivaling Homer.

In 2000, there was Florida... brought to the nation by the supposedly Machiavellian Princess in blue eyeshadow, GOP then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

In 2004, there was Ohio... brought to us by one of the most feared political creatures by the left, a conservative who happens to be black, GOP then-Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.

In 2008, are we supposed to believe Al Franken lost because of election overseeing dereliction on the part of DFL Minnesota Secretary of State (SOS) Mark Ritchie?

I disagree with GOP U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's initial strategy of trying to discourage a recount. Franken is entitled to one, and Minnesota law wisely provides for one in close races.

However, Franken and the DFL Party are not entitled to, at best, cast doubt on our process, or worse, create chaos. The PR and legal strategy appears to hang on "properly cast votes properly counted." 

Franken:  His goal is "to ensure that every vote is properly counted.”

At 7:22 p.m. last night, the Secretary of State's Web site was updated (after working hours) to reflect an additional 100 voters.

The precinct reporting was Mountain Iron Precinct One.

Every one of those 100 votes was cast for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama...and DFL Senate candidate Al Franken.

Mountain Iron is in legislative District 5A.

In 2006, 5A voted 74.3% for U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and 22.6% for then-U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy.  In 2004, 5A voted 65.9% for U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and 30.2% for President George W. Bush.  In 2002, 5A voted 69.9% for Fritz Mondale and 26.4% for U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN).

Isn't 100 new votes for Obama and Franken in Mountain Iron Precinct One statistically impossible?

[We're working on other recount stories for today's Weekly Report and we'll post at least one of them here later today.]

Update 2:40 p.m.:  The Coleman campaign has just filed a data practices request.  From the press release,"As improbably and statistically dubious chunks of votes appear and disappear overwhelmingly benefitting Al Franken, the Coleman for Senate campaign today filed a data pactices request with county auditors and the Secretary of State requesting data related to Election Night results, records related to ballot security and information relating to all revisions made to the results since being reported on Election Night."

Minnesotans who just can’t get enough of elections will get their wish starting Nov. 19, when a state recount of the 2.9 million ballots cast in the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and DFL challenger Al Franken starts.

Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State, outlined the ballot recount process for media – some asking how little, if any, sleep they had during Tuesday night’s election coverage – during a Wednesday briefing at the State Office Building. As it turns out, the Coleman-Franken race is one of four Minnesota races that meet the legal standard to trigger a recount.

Franken trailed Coleman by 725 votes, just three one-hundredths of 1 percent, as most of Coleman’s midnight lead of 18,000 votes in nation’s most expensive Senate race disappeared overnight. Ballots cast in three legislative races also will be recounted after the State Canvassing Board meets Nov. 18. The winning margins in all three legislative races to be recounted are less than 100 votes.

Races with impending recounts are Minnesota Senate District 16, in which DFLer Lisa A. Fobbe holds a 96-vote lead over Republican Alison Krueger; House District 16A, where 99 votes separate DFLer Gail Kulick Jackson and incumbent Republican state Rep. Sondra Erickson; and House District 12B, where DFL state Rep. Al Doty holds a 76-vote lead over Republican challenger Mike LeMieur.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken is waiting on a smattering of election results from around the state at 3:30 a.m. It could be a long wait.

Franken's spokesman Andy Barr offered some goodwill in the form of coffee to the members of the press as he explained that the wait will last until all precincts have been reported to the Minnesota secretary of state's office.

"The good news is we are getting coffee, and we will try to get enough for everyone," Barr said.

The vote between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is quite tight right now, but many precincts in the Arrowhead haven't reported yet. It looks like there might more than a thousand net votes for Franken in St. Louis, Itasca and Carlton counties. St. Louis County is at 24,331 to 38,920 with 43 precincts that haven't been reported in a county (that's going 54-33 for Franken).

The numbers are jumping around on the SOS website, so we can't say what's happening -- Coleman might be pulling away. As of 2:35 a.m., the total for Coleman is 1,159,480, Franken 1,146,967. At 2:38, that gap jumped to 1,168,055-1,154,266. However, the key Iron Range-Arrowhead DFL constituency is coming in strong for Franken.

If there's a chance, it's here!
UPDATE 2:53 a.m.: The Coleman lead is down to 6,802 on the SOS site, with 4,044 of 4,130 precincts reporting statewide.
UPDATE 3:05 a.m.: Coleman's lead has ticked back up to 6,993, with 4,056 precincts counted, so it looks pretty tough for Franken to pull it off. However, a recount might be in the making.
UPDATE 3:15 a.m.: It looks like an automatic recount is likely. From the 2006 SOS recount manual: