Franken’s Undervote Strategy
It’s now apparent that Al Franken will pursue an undervote strategy to win the election. Such a strategy should be immediately rejected for several reasons. Amanda Carpenter’s Townhall column exposes that myth:
Al Franken’s campaign has been telling reporters that any vote for Barack Obama should count for a vote for Franken in his now-deadlocked recount with incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Franken calls it an “undervote,” meaning if a ballot is checked for Obama, but is “mistakingly” left blank for the Senate race, it should go to him. He may want to abandon this logic. The polling data in the run-up to the election shows otherwise.
His nasty brandy of campaigning against Coleman in state of “Minnesota nice” put him anywhere between 12 and 15 points BEHIND Obama. The Minnesota Star-Tribune (the “Strib” as they call it, rhymes with “Trig”) found only 68% of those who said they would vote for Obama were planning to vote for Franken in a survey conducted October 29-31, days before the election.
I talked with several liberals in Central Minnesota who told me that they couldn’t vote for Franken because he’s such a total jerk. Most of these good liberals said that they’d be casting their votes for Dean Barkley. A small percentage said that they’d be voting for Sen. Coleman even though they didn’t particularly like Sen. Coleman.
Some longtime DFL activists said they wouldn’t vote for anyone because they’d “never vote for a Republican” but they simply couldn’t vote for Al Franken. Most of the people in this group said that they were upset that Franken would refer to Paul Wellstone as his friend, saying that Wellstone was a saint while believing that Franken more closely resembled the guy with a pitchfork and the pointy ears. (No, I’m not referring to Spock.)
Before the election, conservatives joked about Franken’s worst nightmare being yards with an Obama sign and a Barkley or Coleman sign in it. Let’s also not forget that Al Franken had a miserable time in the primary. Most of the time, the endorsed candidate vanquishes the primary challenger with 85-95 percent of the vote. Al Franken won with 65 percent of the vote, with Priscilla Lord-Faris getting just short of 30 percent in the Sept. 9 primary. Al Franken even lost 4 counties. Here’s are some statistics I posted immediately following the primary:
Let’s first look at the race from the perspective from the St. Cloud area. Here’s what the SecState’s website shows for Benton County:
Al Franken got 859 votes, which equates into 55.96% of the vote.
Priscilla Lord-Faris got 551 votes, which equates into 35.9% of the vote.Here’s the final tally from Stearns County:
Al Franken got 2,148 votes, which equates into 55.43% of the vote.
Priscilla Lord-Faris got 1,553 votes, which equates into 40.08% of the vote.Here’s the final tally in Sherburne County:
Al Franken got 1,219 votes, which equates into 60.65% of the vote.
Priscilla Lord-Faris got 712 votes, which equates into 35.42% of the vote.
This is proof that lots of DFL activists were disgusted with Mr. Franken. Why else would only 1 person show up for a Franken event in St. Cloud? Everyone remembers that. That story was highlighted on the Drudge page for a couple days. The LA Times wrote an article about it. Now we’re supposed to forget that event and assume that people who would’ve run through walls for Obama and who hated Franken really intended to vote for Franken even though the ballots weren’t marked? I think not.
Yesterday, Mark Ritchie told MSNBC that the Coleman campaign’s “goal was to win at any price”, something that the Coleman campaign immediately rejected. It’s apparent that Mr. Franken’s campaign is willing to do anything to win this election. It’s apparent because they’re attempting to convince election judges that they know the voter’s intent was to vote for Mr. Franken even though the ballots aren’t marked as such.
I just spoke with someone in the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office about the types of ballots available in Minnesota. I did this to verify that the forms weren’t confusing. (I did this as verification, not as an investigation.) The gentleman I spoke with said that they employed two ballot types.
One type of ballot has an oval alongside the candidate’s name. To vote for a candidate on such a ballot, the voter is required to fill in the oval.
The other ballot type is a connect the arrow type. As you can see, this isn’t a confusing system. In fact, it’s one of the most straightforward ballots in the nation.
My point is this: It’s impossible to convince thinking people that a ballot that’s marked for President-Elect Obama but isn’t marked for Al Franken is really a vote for Mr. Franken.
Mr. Franken, it’s time to stop the attempted theft of this election. It’s time that Mr. Franken let the results speak for themselves.
Technorati Tags: Al Franken, Undervotes, Barack Obama, Norm Coleman, Dean Barkley, Mark Ritchie, Priscilla Lord-Faris, Recount, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
November 13th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
This post quotes Amanda Carpenter:
“Al Franken’s campaign has been telling reporters that any vote for Barack Obama should count for a vote for Franken“.
Is this supported by any news story that a reporter has filed and is available for anyone to see? This sounds like an empty comment if there is no true source.
What is the truth here?
November 14th, 2008 at 10:09 am
And if true, are they saying that because they know the “votes” are there somewhere (after all they put them in themselves), or because they have some valid reason to believe the votes actually were cast by real voters, or are they just making the assumption that if people voted, then they voted the entire ballot.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I suppose in California, any vote for Barack Obama should count as a vote for Proposition 8.
In my old neighborhood, that was pretty much the case.