Today, they’ve invented a story of a lead in the recount

Well why should Coleman's people be the only ones who get to invent stories about having a lead in the recount?

I like how the Coleman team is trying to change the date. Just challenge more votes and this Friday you too could be a winner. Norm, I'm sorry to say you don't get declare yourself the winner until after the challenged ballots are vetted and you still have more votes than Al.

We have confidence that on Friday the results of the recount will show Norm Coleman has emerged, again, as the winner of the 2008 United States Senate election.

He wasn't winner before, he can't be winner "again". He had a lead, pending a recount. He's never been the winner of the 2008 United States Senate election and with luck, he never will be.

Franken's team noted the opinion of the election judges on each ballot challenged. Their count assumes the election judges' opinions will be upheld.

It's a pretty good assumption, since some the the Coleman challenges are clear votes that they are challenging because its incomprehensible to them how anyone could vote for McCain and Franken on the same ballot.

But I'm still bankin'

On Franken..

All this back and forth dickering about this or that ballot in a race whose margin is meaningless.

What they ought to do is have a runoff. As I understand, minor parties picked up a substantial number of votes, no?

It's much more rational to have a new election between these two candidates alone.

Why do we not have a good system of runoff or instant runoff voting in this country?

From what I understand, they can't have a recount like Georgia's because Minnesota state law doesn't require one, and you can't go changing the rules in the middle of the election.

Zionists would no doubt vote McCain/Franken.

I'm not suggesting some sort of deus-ex-machina intervention, just bemoaning the fact that there's not more use of runoff and instant runoff voting in our electoral system.

and their worldwide control of.....well something.

For a moment, I thought it was 2000 and Al Gore was pushing for every vote that was his...

Anyway, if Al Franken wins we will get some kind of poetic justice. Maybe Karma will be laughing, out there in the universe somewhere, when the other Al wins in a close election...

Go Al, go, we KNOW you will win!!!

"I blame the Jews ..."

A new screen name doesn't hide the same old bizarre rants.

The two numbers are different because of two different assumptions about the result of about 6,000 ballot challenges the two campaigns have made. The secretary of state's count assumes that all the challenges will result in the ballots being declared invalid; the Franken camp's count, on the other hand, assumes that all the challenges will be overruled.

I think that is false on both counts.

A ballot may be challenged if it is counted or not counted. That is, someone may challenge a ballot because it was counted and they think it shouldn't be, or because it wasn't counted and they think it should be. Or they may challenge a ballot that was counted for one candidate because they think it should be counted for the other.

The Secretary of state's released numbers simply omit all challenged ballots, whether the people doing the recount counted them or not. Given the high rate of challenges, this "hides" a lot of ballots. It doesn't "assume" anything, it merely treats challenged ballots as ballots not yet counted. When they're re-examined and challenges decided on, then they'll be counted or not, depending on the ruling.

Franken's estimate, on the other hand, is based on observing what ballots were challenged, what those ballots actually looked like, what the people counting thought they should count (or not count) as, etc. Franken's estimate doesn't "assume all challenges will be overruled", as that would be utter nonsense - and I'm not saying that because it's unlikely, I'm saying that because it *makes no sense*. What Franken's estimate is doing, is making a judgement about how each of these ballots will be counted or not counted (remember, each ballot has three relevant options: Franken, Coleman, or neither/not counted).

Franken's estimate obviously has a margin of error. It's not an actual count, it's an estimate. But it's the best picture we have right now.

The Secretary of State's estimate, on the other hand, is by definition guaranteed to be wrong and grossly inaccurate compared to Franken's estimate, and also has an unknown but probably systematic bias. However, it is technically accurate and precise for what it claims to be: A tally of all *unchallenged* ballots counted so far.