All eyes on ballots

• Norm Coleman, Republican

Norm Coleman, Republican
• Al Franken, Democrat

Al Franken, Democrat
• A scribble or a vote?

This ballot was challenged by the Coleman campaign.
• Counting ballots

Douglas County Elections Administrator Vicki Doehling (right) discusses a questionable ballot with a campaign representative for Minnesota Senate Democratic candidate Al Franken, while a representative for Republican Norm Coleman and other election observers (left) look on. Echo Press photo by Mike Enright.

Talk about it

Hunched over the gray table in front of him, the man in the dark green flannel shirt squinted at the sprawling piles of white paper before him.

He scanned each piece, looking for the proper mark, before picking it up, the single sheet making a slight scraping noise as it slid across the one below it.

The man, flanked on each side by keen observers, counted: “One, two, three…”

And so it went Wednesday, the first day of Douglas County’s part in the statewide recount for the 2008 Minnesota Senate race.

Spread across three tables in the boardroom of the county commissioners, a team of 10 elections officials, including the man in the dark green flannel, spent the day counting by hand the votes cast by Douglas County residents on November 4.

The goal: to verify the county’s election day machine-tallied vote totals as part of a statewide effort to determine who will be Minnesota’s next U.S. senator – Republican incumbent Norm Coleman or Democratic challenger Al Franken.

In the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, Coleman entered the recount leading Franken by 215 votes, 0.007 percent, out of the 2.9 million cast across the state.

According to Minnesota law, a statewide recount is automatically triggered in any federal office general election contest when the difference between the top two candidates is less than 0.5 percent.

In Douglas County, the first day of the recount went smoothly for the most part, with few snafus.

Under the watchful eyes of 13 Coleman representatives and eight Franken representatives, county election officials counted close to 5,600 ballots out of more than 20,000 cast.

Officials completed nine of the 38 precincts in the county, including all of Alexandria city and Belle River Township, with the hand count totals matching most of those reported on election night.

Coleman might have picked up two votes, however, possibly gaining one vote in each of the first precincts in Alexandria’s first and third wards.

The day’s counting, though, took longer than anticipated, said Vicki Doehling, Douglas County elections administrator.

“I was expecting to be done with Alexandria city by noon,” she said.

Doehling said one of the things that slowed the process was that election staff had to look at both the fronts and backs of ballots, even though they are only checking results for the Senate race.

They didn’t know that prior to Wednesday, she said.

The surprise rule resulted in two of the four total ballots challenged by campaign representatives during the day (three by Coleman’s crew and one by Franken’s), with one ballot challenged because of smudges surrounding marks for candidates in local judge races and the other due to an errant red line on the back of the ballot.

Any identifying marks are not allowed on ballots under election rules.

The other two ballots were challenged because in each case the voter had completely filled in the circle corresponding to one of the Senate candidates and partially filled in the circle for the other.

Tags: minnesota, senator, ballot, recount