Recounts & the Internet

Anyone whose scholarship involves working with U.S. government documents has benefited from the internet. FRUS is now all on-line; all of the presidential libraries have robust sites, the Miller Center has digitized versions of all the presidential tapes, and some archival collections have scanned documents available.

The internet also allows transparency in political documents as well. A good example comes in the Minnesota recount, where the Star Tribune has placed digitized versions of all the ballots challenged in the Coleman-Franken race. Both the AP and a group of S-T readers have gone through all the ballots and concluded that Franken is likely to narrowly prevail.

How is this possible, given Coleman's current lead of nearly 200 votes? The Coleman campaign, it appears, was far more aggressive in making frivolous challenges, which took ballots out of play in the preliminary count, thereby temporarily inflating Coleman's overall total.

A favorite Coleman tactic appears to have been claiming that voters who included the same name for write-ins in multiple other offices were actually identifying themselves, in violation of Minnesota law.

None of those challenges, of course, will succeed (voters have every right to vote for themselves as write-ins for as many offices as they want), and a handful are downright comical. Take this ballot from heavily Democratic St. Louis County. The Coleman campaign challenged it, for an"identifying mark." It's just a guess, but I doubt Jesus Christ came back to Earth to vote for Al Franken.