Unusual Numbers And Box Seals-Almost .5% Error In One Ramsey County Precinct

Courtesy of Grace Kelly of MN Blue who was observing the first day of the recount in Ramsey County for The UpTake

Here is my first day report of the recount. The most interesting item is that Precinct 5-2 (Ward 5-Precinct 2) was off by 9 votes, which is startling because rarely does a precinct count vary by as much as 4 votes. An undercount could easily happen, it would simply mean a pen was used that the machine could not read. However these 9 votes were machine overvote, meaning the machine read more votes, than the manual recount read, which is surprising. Sometimes a ballot jams the machine and is re-submitted in error, when people think it wasn't read. So that can account for a few, not 9. The total manual count is 2000 is 10 off from the 2010 ballots cast from the Secretary of State website (a friend looked this up for me). So, this is a mystery and an outlyer. More info on this later in the article.

I hope this image conveys the intensity of people watching the recount. On the sides of the lead election official there is a Senator Coleman representative and a Senator Franken representative. Three additional election officials sit around the table. Around the table hovers extra observers from the campaign, non-partisan observers, media, other election officials and of course people watching the live stream on The UpTake (about 20-30).

Process: The process is that a election official retrieves the ballots out of locked secure storage. The boxes including the envelope of write in ballots is opened. The ballots are turned and straightened so the front page is showing upright. Then the lead person sorts into Franken, Coleman and Other while both campaign representatives watch. Then the ballots are counted in stacks of 25, the stacks of 25 are grouped into 100 piles and then 500 piles.

Less than 25 piles have a pink sticker with the number. Basically the piles are counted once, although most of the time a recount was asked for. So seven people watch and count together from 1 to 25 on each count. It is very intense.

Any ballot can be challenged and is put into the challenge envelope. The only challenges that I saw were due to the ballot being a different weight than the other ballots. Any challenged ballot is put into a separate envelope and NOT counted.

There is also an envelope of duplicates, which are ballots that someone filled out incorrectly and was then given a new ballot to fill out. So all ballots, even these spoiled ballots are kept and tracked.

Each campaign has forms that they are keeping track of what happens, especially the differences. There was some confusion since the number of ballots cast in the precinct was not available to compare to, that made many people uncomfortable. Only the certified count Franken and Coleman numbers were available to compare to.

More on Precinct 5-2

So we have these numbers, counted at least twice

Senate ballots that did not vote Franken or Coleman - 321

Senate Certified Franken count - 1115
Senate today's manual Franken recount - 1108
Difference - A loss of 7 votes

Senate Certified Colman count - 573
Senate today's manual Coleman recount - 571
Difference - A loss of 2 votes

My friends lookup of election day ballot numbers - 2010
Todays total count - (431 + 1108 + 571) = 2000

I will post more if I get a more detailed breakdown from the Secretary of State's website.

Wait, wait, there is more about Precinct 5-2

There are two ways the boxes are secured. One through distinctive twist ties and one through judge signed labels that are put over the edge of the box. These labels normally have to be cut to get into the box. Anytime the box is opened, new labels with election judges signatures have to be reattached. This was not done on Precinct 5-2 boxes as my pictures show.

This box is correctly done.

This is precinct 5-2 box without the election judge labels over the edge.

Wait, wait, one more item about Precinct 5-2

The envelope that was supposed to hold all ballots that had any write in at all was empty. Those write in ballots could have been mixed in but I did not spot any. I also could not see the back page where most write-ins are written. Since the number that my friend found on SOS website (2010) is 10 off from today's count, could the stack of ballots with write-ins have been left behind? Or did ballots get read by the machine more than once? Otherwise, how did we get a 9 vote loss? Did the machine read that poorly? Hmmm, a mystery!

There is a more complete report that the election judges fill out like machine problems etc. I would love to see that report for precinct 5-2.

I don't know if additional precincts can be added for performance review. I would certainly like this precinct to be performance reviewed, because these are unusual numbers.

Updates will be posted here if I receive more information.