CHARGES OF fraud in the Minnesota Senate race. “Mountain Iron uses optical scanning, so the Coleman campaign asked for a copy of the tape documenting the ballots cast on election night. St. Louis County responded by providing a tape that includes the newly-added 100 votes, and is dated November 2–the Sunday before the election. St. Louis County reportedly denies being able to produce the genuine tape from election night, even though Minnesota law, as I understand it, requires that tape to be signed by the election judges and publicly displayed.”
UPDATE: Reader Joshua Dixon writes:
I am a small town newspaper editor in a purplish part of Minnesota. Based on what I’ve read and observed, the Coleman/Franken election recount fails the smell test many times over.
With Minnesota election rules and the optical scanning system, each ballot must be checked, rechecked, accounted for and re-accounted for by a number of election judges. Each judge’s tally must match the others’, and with the scanning machine’s tape produced the night of the election. The machine prints out three copies of each ward’s results on a single tape, which has to be signed in triplicate by the judges, and sent to the county seat. A day or so later, each town or township gets back a third of the tape it sent in on election night for convassing at an open meeting.
According to the city clerk I talked to just a few minutes ago, the election night tape is considered public record, and anyone who wants to can walk in and ask to examine the tapes. When I asked if I could take a photo of the relevant part of this town’s results of the Coleman/Franken contest, she not only allowed it, she straightened the tapes (Ward 1 and Ward 2) so I could get a better picture (attached).
The Powerline story brings up some legitimate questions. Here are a few more: How can St. Louis County deny being able to produce the genuine tape from election night? They were provided with one tape containing three copies of the results, one of which was required to be sent back to the town of Mountain Iron for canvassing. Did they send Mountain Iron its copy of the tape for convassing at an open meeting? If so, why not just provide the town’s copy of the tape instead of the county’s? Were the county and city’s copies of the tape treated as public record? If not, why not?
In short: the explanations for Franken’s new votes just don’t work.
Perhaps the Department of Justice and the FBI will take an interest?