{"id":193622,"date":"2008-12-02T18:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T23:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/02\/election-update-20\/"},"modified":"2008-12-02T18:18:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-02T23:18:00","slug":"election-update-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/02\/election-update-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Election Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing on Georgia, polls haven&#8217;t closed, and I don&#8217;t have access to exit polls, this is all him, Al Franken,<sup>*<\/sup> in Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>The lede has to be that they <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.publicradio.org\/display\/web\/2008\/12\/02\/foundballots\/?refid=0\">found 171 uncounted ballots in Ramsey County<\/a>, a Franken stronghold, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/state\/35382149.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUec7PaP3E77K_0c::D3aDhUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU\">heads are exploding in the Coleman campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the percentages there, that should net around 30 votes for Franken.<\/p>\n<p>Even so, there are indications that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/national\/senate\/35329829.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUxWoW_oD:EaDUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU\">two campaigns are trying to make nice<\/a>, or at least appear to, as they are suggesting withdrawing some of their more stupid ballot challenges.<\/p>\n<p>My suggestion: never trust a smiling Republican, and Norm Coleman is <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">always<\/span> smiling.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile the good folks at TPM Election Central have a <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2008\/12\/new_signs_that_recount_momentu.php\">rundown on recent developments<\/a>, in addition to the found ballots, we have a further narrowing in the vote, and the<br \/>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&#8217;s challenge to the rejection of about 1K ballots seriously.<\/p>\n<p>My take is that it will all come down to the challenges, and that the Coleman campaign has been <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">much<\/span>  more aggressive with these, so I would give a very slight advantage to Al Franken.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">It&#8217;s a roughly 30 year old reference to a running sketch on <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-size:78%;\" >Saturday Night Live<\/span><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nothing on Georgia, polls haven&#8217;t closed, and I don&#8217;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 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1000],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}