Franken Wins Two Key Canvassing Board Decisions

From Politico:

Al Franken’s campaign won two key rulings today that may help him overcome a tiny deficit against Sen. Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate recount.

The Minnesota Canvassing Board unanimously recommended that all counties include the absentee ballots that were unfairly rejected on Election Day in the recount. Election officials throughout the state have been sorting absentee ballots based on why they were rejected – and putting aside a fifth group (called the “fifth pile”) with those unfairly rejected ballots.

Minnesota’s Deputy Secretary of State predicted over 1,500 ballots fall in this category. If they’re included, they could potentially overturn Coleman’s razor-thin lead. Coleman leads Franken by 192 votes, according to the Secretary of State’s official count.

Earlier, the Canvassing Board voted unanimously to include the 133 missing ballots from a Minneapolis precinct that voted overwhelmingly for Franken -- another victory for the Franken camp. Coleman’s campaign argued the ballots may never have existed in the first place, and shouldn’t have been counted.

Next week, the Canvassing Board will pore over as many as 4,000 ballots that both campaigns have disputed.

Carmouche Unlikely to Ask For Recount

Earlier today, the campaign of Democrat Paul Carmouche announced that it is unlikely that they would call for a recount in the close election in Louisiana's 4th district.

Carmouche is simply waiting for the vote to be certified tomorrow, after election officials count the small number of remaining provisional and absentee ballots, which is unlikely to tilt the race in his favor.

His opponent, Republican Jim Fleming, leads Carmouche by 356 votes. So without a recount, it seems highly likely that Fleming will prevail and keep the seat in the Republicans' hands.

Search for Misplaced 133 Ballots Called Off

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The missing 133 ballots in a Minneapolis precinct are going to stay missing - at least for now.

City spokesman Matt Laible said today that officials had suspended the search for the ballots that began after they turned up missing in the waning hours of last week's U.S. Senate recount.

The matter will be turned over to the state Canvassing Board, which will decide whether the 133 will be officially counted, Laible said.

The ballots at issue are from the Dinkytown neighborhood, a heavily Democratic area, and a comparison of Election Day results and recount totals indicates that not counting them could cost Al Franken a net of 46 votes. That has prompted his campaign to complain loudly about the disappearance. The campaign of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, however, expressed skepticism that the ballots were truly lost.

Franken campaign attorney Marc Elias is now saying that the Franken campaign wants to switch back to the original election night tally, instead of just throwing away the 133 votes, which would essentially cut Franken's losses.

Mary Jo Kilroy (D) Wins OH-15

From the AP:

Democrats have taken a seat from House Republicans after the counting of provisional ballots in a race in central Ohio.

Unofficial results Sunday showed that Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy beat Republican Steve Stivers by more than 2,000 votes.

Provisional ballots are issued at polls to people who believe they were wrongly denied the right to vote. Kilroy had held a lead of less than 600 votes before they were counted.

This victory for the Democrats puts the composition of Congress at 256 Democrats to 177 Republicans, a 79-seat majority. The only two races that have yet to be resolved are LA-04 and VA-05, where there will likely be recounts in both districts.

Cao Uspets Jefferson in LA-02; Fleming Declares Victory in LA-04

In Louisiana's 2nd District, little-known Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao defeated nine-term Democratic incumbent Rep. William Jefferson--who is facing a multi-count federal indictment for a corruption case that involves $90,000 in cash being found in his freezer--in a stunning upset.

This district is overwhelmingly black and Democratic, and Jefferson--despite his indictment--was widely expected to win re-election. Instead, Cao will take up his spot, and will be the first Vietnamese-American to go to Congress.

In Louisiana's 4th district, Republican John Fleming leads Democrat Paul Carmouche by 356 votes with 100% of precincts reporting, but provisional ballots are still outstanding. Fleming has claimed victory, but Carmouche has not conceded defeat.

The local newspaper, The Shreveport Times, is calling it for Fleming, but the AP has not yet done so. FiveThirtyEight.com is calling it an "apparent victory" for Fleming.

Since Fleming's margin of victory was less than half of a percentage point, Carmouche can still demand a recount, but making up the difference 356 votes out of about 90,000 might be too high a mountain to climb for Carmouche. But hey, it's Louisiana, so anything can happen.

Ohio Supreme Court Tosses 1,000 Ballots in OH-15

Voters had improperly filled out the outer envelope on the disputed ballots, which had been among about 27,000 left to be counted in the undecided 15th district congressional race between Republican Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.

On Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court threw out about 1,000 provisional ballots from Democratic-leaning Franklin County that had been improperly filled out by voters in the tight congressional race in Ohio's 15th district--between Republican Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.

The all-Republican court turned down Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's motion to have the 1,000 votes counted by a count of 4-2. Since Brunner is a Democrat, many of her decisions and actions have come under scrutiny from Republicans that she is favoring Kilroy.

The 1,000 ballots in dispute had been improperly signed on the outside of the envelope or signed in the wrong place. There are still 27,000 provisional ballots that Franklin County elections board spokesman Ben Piscitelli said would be tabulated Saturday afternoon and likely certified by Monday.

Right now, Stivers leads Kilroy by 149 votes. Since this race is likely to be decided a double-digit margin of votes, a recount is likely. So we may not know the winner of this one until closer to Christmas. Oy.

LA-02 and LA-04 Elections Are Today

The last two races of the 2008 election will be happening today in Louisiana's 2nd and 4th districts. The Democratic and Republican primary dates were moved back because of Hurricane Ike, so now the general election will be today.

In Louisiana's 2nd district, which encompasses a large chunk of New Orleans and is heavily black and Democratic, the incumbent, Democrat William Jefferson, has been indicted on twelve counts of corruption, money laundering, and international bribery among other things. His opponents are the Republican candidate, lawyer Anh "Joseph" Cao, and the Green Party candidate, community organizer Malik Rahim.

Despite Jefferson's indictment, he is expected to win re-election. But then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a problem on her hands on whether to seat him on committees, say he's innocent until proven guilty and seat him until the trial, or expel him from the caucus? We'll take a look at that after we know the outcome of today's election.

In Louisiana's 4th district, Democrat Paul Carmouche and Republican John Fleming are vying to replace retiring Republican Rep. Jim McCrery. Polls show the race to be very very close, and it is considered a tossup by most political pundits.

President-elect Barack Obama, clearly wanting to expand his party's majority in the House, cut a radio ad for Carmouche. Michelle Obama also recorded a robo-call for him as well.

This race could truly go either way, but it would be icing on the cake if the Democrats picked this seat off from the Republicans. I'll be back later with the results from the two races.

Democrat Concedes in CA-04

From Politico:

Republican Tom McClintock is now officially the congressman-elect from California’s Fourth District after his Democratic rival, Charlie Brown, conceded the race this afternoon.

McClintock declared victory earlier in the week, but Brown’s campaign hinted it would ask for a recount. But with McClintock leading by 1,576 votes, Brown today decided not to contest the race.

"Unfortunately, we've come up less than one half of one percent -- just under 1,800 votes -- short of victory," Brown said in a statement. "So a short time ago, I called Senator Tom McClintock to congratulate him on a hard fought victory, and to wish him well in Congress."

This puts the current tally of the new House of Representatives at:
Democrats: 255
Republicans: 176

Only four House races have yet to be resolved.

In Ohio's 15th district, Republican Steve Stivers leads Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by 594 votes. But the outcome of this election depends on an imminent decision by the Ohio Supreme Court about whether to count about 27,000 disputed provisional ballots from Democratic-leaning Franklin County, which is also Kilroy's native county. If the court rules in favor of counting the ballots, the Democrats will pick up this seat.

In Virginia's 5th district, Democrat Tom Perriello leads Republican incumbent Virgil Goode by 745 votes after the final tally. But state law requires a margin of that size to give way to an automatic recount, which will take place on December 16. Perriello's lead is expected to hold, but nothing will be official until all of the 316,679 votes are recounted on that day.

There will be elections in Louisiana's 2nd and 4th districts on Saturday, which were postponed by Hurricane Ike. I'll have more on those races later this week.

Chambliss Wins Runoff

With 93% of precincts reporting, Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss (left) leads Democratic challenger Jim Martin 58 to 42%. AP, CNN, and most of the other major news organizations have called the race for Chambliss.

African Americans did not come out in as large numbers as they did in November, and Chambliss's message seemed to have resonated with many Georgians.

This is certainly a disappointing night for Democrats, whose dreams of a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate were dashed tonight by Chambliss's victory.

But this election can be a learning lesson for Democrats for future election years. As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com said, "I think the Democrats need to think carefully about what went wrong here as they begin to gear up for 2010."

The current count of the new Senate is 58 to 41 in the Democrats favor (including Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side).

The only race that has yet to be decided is the one in Minnesota, where the recount is still going on. The the Canvassing Board will have to look over at least 6,000 challenged ballots, one-by-one, before we know the winner. And that probably won't be until late December at the earliest.

For those of you out there who still crave more elections, the last two races of this year will be on Saturday, as LA-02 and LA-04 hold their postponed elections. I will delve into those races later in the week.

Georgia Senate Runoff Prediction

The polls in Georgia close in a few hours, and I thought I'd give my last minute prediction--my last one until 2010--right about now. So for old time's sake, here we go.

Right now the polls have Chambliss up by about 5 points over Martin going into election day, but it is nearly impossible to run an accurate poll in a runoff election because it is very hard to predict turnout (which is supposed to be way down from November 4). But here's my prediction anyway:

Saxby Chambliss* (R)--53%
Jim Martin (D)--47%

Let's put it this way. On the day before the runoff election, Chambliss had Sarah Palin campaigning for him and Martin had the rapper Ludacris. That fact alone should speak volumes about what the outcome of this race will likely be.

Overall, the national GOP has put a lot more effort into this race, contributing money and sending Republican stars like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and of course, Sarah Palin to stump for Chambliss.

On the Democratic side, only Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Donna Brazile have made appearances for Martin.

And to be fair, the Republicans have been making a much stronger argument to Georgia voters in their attempt to "stop rampant liberalism" by preventing the Democrats from attaining that 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

There has been some anecdotal evidence that Martin does have a better ground game and get-out-the-vote effort than Chambliss, which is probably because hundreds of volunteers and paid campaign workers from the Obama campaign swooped down to Georgia to work for Martin right after the November 4 election.

But the bad news for Martin is the group that saved him from losing outright to Chambliss on the first election day--African Americans--have dropped off, according to polling data of early voters. 35% of early voters were African Americans in the first election because of the excitement with Obama, but now that number has dropped to 23%. That's going to be a big problem for Martin.

Martin's campaign is saying that unlike the Obama campaign's emphasis on early voting, they did not do a gigantic early and absentee voting push, instead opting for a big December 2 turnout. They had better hope so, or they really don't have a prayer.

I think that between Chambliss's argument that he's the firewall between the Democrats and their 60-seat majority, the GOP star power in Georgia, and the drop in African American turnout, Chambliss will win the seat comfortably by six points over Martin.

Since Chambliss did finish 3 points ahead of Martin on November 4, he is still the favorite, but is by no means a shoe-in. It is true that anything can happen in the runoff, and they notoriously hard to predict. But it does seem as though there is a strong motivation among Georgia Republicans to come back and win this one.

Runoffs are usually a battle of the bases, and to me, it looks like their base is more enthusiastic and will come out in larger numbers to keep their guy, Saxby Chambliss, in the Senate.