Well, first some definitive news, Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy has beaten Steve Stivers in Ohio’s 15th district. She was behind on election night, but the provisional ballots came from her electoral stronghold, the certified vote has her winning by 2411 votes.

On the other hand it looks like Republican John Fleming has defeated Democrat Paul Carmouche by just 356 votes in LA-4.

Things are still up in the air in Minnesota, with the Franken campaign withdrawing more challenges, and Minneapolis has
called off the search for the missing ballots, and will just report what was counted on election day.

As always, it should come down to the challenges in Minnesota.

So, we still have about 133 ballots missing in Minnesota, but now we have some twists, with the Coleman campaign claiming that they never existed, and election officials saying that they most certainly do exist. Given the circumstances, I’d go with the election officials:

Minneapolis elections chief Cindy Reichert explained yesterday that the ballots were placed in envelopes numbered 1 to 5 — and they’re missing the “1” envelope, probably still in storage at the warehouse. The precinct has obtained a waiver from the Secretary of State to keep their recount officially open while a thorough search goes on.

If envelope “5” were missing, Coleman and His Evil Minions^™ might have a case, but not for envelopes 1, 2, 3, and 4.

This entire thing gets even crazier when you discover that elections officials just found another envelope of missing ballots, but only 12-20 uncounted absentee ballots, not the 133.

Franken campaign is saying that they are up by 4 votes, but considering how random things are when the count is this close, it’s really flipping a coin, I just hope that the coin isn’t “Two Face’s” coin, because if it’s Two Face, Norm “Two Face” Coleman wins.

We now have rumors of more Republican retirements, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and George Voinovich of Ohio, though a spokesman for the latter denied this.

Well, in Minnesota, the Coleman campaign withdrew 650 ballot challenges in response to the withdrawal of challenges yesterday by the Franken campaign.

It will come down to the challenges and the excluded absentee ballots, but I think that Franken has a slight advantage.

Also, on a sad note, Tom McClintock (R) beat Charlie Brown (D) in Doolittle’s old district in California.

A heart breaker there…Less than 1800 votes out of about 360,000 cast.

Well, the Franken campaign is now explicitly claiming that it is in the lead over Coleman, maintaining that his campaign is using bogus challenges to keep their numbers up.

They say that their lead is somewhere in the mid 20 vote range (here and here)

Basically, they took notes of all the challenges, and recorded the precinct staff’s opinion as to the clear intent of the voter.

Additionally, it appears that 133 ballots have gone missing from a solidly Franken precinct.

Even if the missing ballots are a clerical error, and I doubt it, it’s been clear from the start that Coleman is going full Bush 2000 on this.

Damn.

Disappointing, but not unexpected.

No 60 Dem Senators.

Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) will not run for re-election in 2010.

No word on whether or not he will finish out his term, or resign to allow Governor Crist to appoint a successor to run in 2010 as an incumbent.

Link to Original Cartoon

Nothing on Georgia, polls haven’t closed, and I don’t have access to exit polls, this is all him, Al Franken,^* in Minnesota.

The lede has to be that they found 171 uncounted ballots in Ramsey County, a Franken stronghold, and heads are exploding in the Coleman campaign.

Based on the percentages there, that should net around 30 votes for Franken.

Even so, there are indications that the two campaigns are trying to make nice, or at least appear to, as they are suggesting withdrawing some of their more stupid ballot challenges.

My suggestion: never trust a smiling Republican, and Norm Coleman is always smiling.

Meanwhile the good folks at TPM Election Central have a rundown on recent developments, in addition to the found ballots, we have a further narrowing in the vote, and the
Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, has instructed local election officials to separate rejected absentee based on the reasons for rejection, which indicates that he is taking Franken’s challenge to the rejection of about 1K ballots seriously.

My take is that it will all come down to the challenges, and that the Coleman campaign has been much more aggressive with these, so I would give a very slight advantage to Al Franken.

^*It’s a roughly 30 year old reference to a running sketch on Saturday Night Live.

A setback for Franken:

The State Canvassing Board, a panel of five arbiters charged with determining the winner in the overtime election tussle between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic rival Al Franken, unanimously voted this morning to deny the Franken campaign’s request that rejected absentee ballots be included in the recount.

I still say that it will come down to the challenges.

The recount in Minnesota is getting increasingly conentious in Minnesota, with ballot challenges on the increasing on both sides, (click image for current graph) and the Franken campaign expressing concerns about missing ballots to the Secretary of State.

Additionally, the Franken campaign is claiming that Norm Coleman and His Evil Minions^&trade are using bogus challenges to keep his total above Franken to influence the canvassing board, which will make the final decision on challenged ballots.

It’s going to be a while before this is all sorted out.

Well, Franken is still down, but Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com says that his math has Franken to winning the recount by 27 votes.

He notes that his number have error bars much larger than 27 votes though, but Nate did call a Begich win the day after the election.

That being said, he is also not considering either the thousands of challenged ballots or rejected absentee votes, and those numbers dwarf his error bar too.

Meanwhile, in the Georgia Senate runoff, the ‘Phants fracked up big time. They sent out a mailing to Republithug voters to get thm to vote by absentee ballots, and neglected to mention that they should sign the applications:

Many of the unsigned requests came in the form of cards printed by the Republican National Committee and mailed to voters. Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss is in a tight battle to retain his seat by beating Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

The signature line on the RNC cards is easy to miss since it appears after an entry asking voters to enter an address different from their permanent one. Georgia doesn’t require voters to give a reason for voting by absentee ballot.

OOPS.

We also have Tom Perriello certified as defeating racist scumbag Rep. Virgil H. Goode by 745 votes. Goode is likely to ask for a recount, but the margin is actually large enough that it’s unlikely to matter.

One interesting thing about all this is that because the certification was so late, Perriello couldn’t take part in the office lottery for freshmen.

Not to worry though, he gets what’s left and that’s Virgil Goode’s office, which, because Goode was a 6 term incumbent, is a very nice office. Heh.

Finally, though not technically an election, but Biden aide Ted Kaufman has been selected to replace the him when he becomes Vice-President.

There are indications that the Coleman Campaign is being aggressive with challenges, probably to attempt to ensure that they go into the canvassing board with a lead, because they do not like the trend.

In any case, the Colman campaign is now eschewing its earlier statements about not talking the canvassing board’s decision to court.

So Coleman is definitely nervous….I would note that the swings are much smaller than in Florida, indicating a better balloting process.