"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Saturday, November 15, 2008

And ANOTHER Republican lie is debunked
Posted by Jill | 11:19 AM
I get so tired of doing this.

This morning I had to send a letter to my local paper in response to a letter to the editor that attempted to defend Sarah Palin's designer shopping spree on the Republicans' dime by citing the already-disproven "The Obamas Stayed at the Waldorf Astoria and Orderd Lobster and Caviar" horseshit dished up by the New York Post in October and then retracted a week later.

You may know that the Usual Suspects on the right have had their panties in a twist about Thirty-Two Franken Ballots In a Car™ -- the idea pulled out of the asses of Minnesota Republicans and the mouthbreathers on right-wing talk radio and television that a Minnesota election director drove around for three solid days with exactly thirty-two votes for Al Franken in the car. They've even put up a web site for their ravings.

There's just one problem: It isn't true:
1. The ballots were never in her car.

2. The ballots were never in anyone’s car for several days.

3. The ballots were never lost or forgotten, and spent Election Night until counting day in secure city facilities.

The sorting hats

OK, so were the ballots ever in a car?

Yes. But stow the outrage until you hear the details.

As most folks know, there were a ton of absentee ballots this year. State law mandates voters return absentee ballots to elections offices, such as the Government Center or City Hall. Officials then must deliver the ballots to individual precincts on Election Day for tallying.

Since the "Star Trek" teleporter has not yet been invented, these ballots are driven to the polling places.

Yes, in cars — like they are every year, throughout Minnesota. (Ramsey County officials confirm they do this, too, for example.)

“What I find ludicrous is that this goes on all around the state,” Reichert says. “If we could process them [at City Hall] we’d love to do that.”

In Minneapolis, the cargo is transported by “precinct support judges,” one for each ward. Seven of the city’s 2008 “PSJs” were declared Democrats, three Republican, two independents and one listed no affiliation.

At about 7 p.m. Election Night, the county sent the city a batch of “uniformed overseas citizens” absentee ballots — from military personnel and Minnesotans living abroad. The ballots have two envelopes — an outer one with basic registration information, and an inner security envelope with the actual vote.

City Hall staff checks the outer envelope to assure registration validity. They then sort the envelopes into 131 Minneapolis precincts for delivery.

Ballots are further sorted by five differing absentee-voting instructions. (For example, some electronically delivered overseas ballots don’t come back in machine-readable form, so precinct judges must transcribe them onto optically scannable sheets.)

Then they have to be handed to the PSJs, who have to travel a 10- or 11-precinct circuit so judges on-site can open the inner security envelope and cast the vote.

For this final batch, it all had to happen in as little as an hour.

Driving the ballots
The drivers went out about 7:30 p.m. Reichert soon heard from some who were worried they might not get to every precinct before closing. Once a precinct judge removes a tallying machine memory card, votes can no longer be counted there.

Reichert says she sent a broadcast message to each precinct’s lead judge to keep sites open, but not everyone received it. Some less-busy sites shut down before the drivers got there.

In accordance with longstanding procedures, the couriers immediately brought the uncounted, unopened ballots — 28 of the now-famous 32 — back to City Hall, where they were stored in a secure room.

(The other four ballots were accidentally unprocessed in the precincts, and were also returned that night to the same place.)

So: The ballots were in cars because state law mandates precinct counting. An election judge always had custody, and they were never “lost.” They were not in vehicles overnight and spent Election Night, and the next several nights, tucked away safely in City Hall.


I have a special interest in the Minnesota Senate seat, and it isn't just because I strongly believe that we need more comedians in Congress. (Maron? Maron?) Now I will be the first one to admit that I have zero proof and that this is strictly tinfoil territory. But I have always found it extremely convenient for the Republicans that they wanted that Senate seat, then occupied by the late Paul Wellstone, very, very badly -- and then like Missouri Sen. Mel Carnahan, he conveniently shows up dead in a plane crash. Contemporary Independent Speculative Investigators (as Marc Maron calls them) like this and this examine it further. But whether you choose to don the tinfoil chapeau or not; whether you believe that foul weather was the cause of the Wellstone crash or something more sinister, the fact remains that the crash allowed the odious Norm Coleman to sail into office without a hitch.

If Norm Coleman did actually win re-election, we will know by the manual recount and accept the judgment of the voters. But given the many irregularities we saw in Minnesota, it seems unlikely that the Republicans would give up such a hard-won Senate seat without a fight.

Labels: , ,

3 comments
Bookmark and Share
3 Comments:
Blogger D. said...
To quote Teresa Nielsen Hayden (again), "I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist."

Because, of course, that crossed my mind.
11/15/08, 1:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I'm afraid we will see nothing but this sort of thing for the next two years until the midterms roll around, then it will escalate. It's "We are willing to give Obama a chance," followed by one stupid complaint after another. Did ya hear, he's now responsible for the recession according to the comic Ruth Limbaugh. Oh gosh they are such crying babies.
11/15/08, 1:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
This is the first I've seen of any suggestion that Wellstone was killed. That's reallt disturbing.
11/15/08, 5:52 PM  
Post a Comment
<< Home