The Coleman campaign appears to have found a genuine example of a particular type of absentee ballot being treated differently throughout the state, in their central claim of Equal Protection — but it seems like they’re effectively fishing for votes for Al Franken.
Coleman lawyer Joe Friedberg has been looking into a category that has come to be known as “3-A” ballots, where a newly-registering voter put their registration form inside the secrecy envelope containing the ballot, rather than immediately within the outer return envelope as they were supposed to. Many local officials now believe those should be counted.
The problem is in figuring out how to identify them. It would involve opening up the secrecy envelope, remaining blind to the actual vote inside, and feeling for that extra card. As it turns out, Anoka County elections manager Rachel Smith said her county had been doing just that. Other county officials have said they didn’t do this, though it may have occurred here and there.
Coleman attorney/spokesman Ben Ginsberg played this up at a lunch-time press conference. “So there is a difference between counties,” Ginsberg said. “It allowed more votes to be counted in Anoka than potentially those other two counties [Ramsey and Washington].”
Now let’s look at that math. Anoka County, which has actively counted 3-A’s, went for Coleman 46%-37%. Ramsey County, which is both bigger than Anoka and didn’t actively count 3-A’s, went for Al 52%-34%. Washington County went 47%-37% for Norm, but had just under half the total votes of Ramsey. So Anoka’s 3-A’s have been mostly counted, while remaining stacks could on balance be from pro-Franken areas.
Furthermore, Franken won the overall absentee ballots by an estimated 8-10 points. And remember that newly-registered voters are in many cases first-time voters, a group that went for Franken by 52%-34%.
If every last remaining 3-A ballot is found and opened, they might just boost Franken. And yet pursuing the 3-A’s is now exactly what Coleman is doing. Counting them would probably be a simple task — but the litigating over it is certainly taking a long time.
(Ginsberg presser c/o The Uptake.)
