As I understand it, the Franken number suggests that all challenges will be thrown out, while the Star Tribune number suggests that all challenged ballots will be thrown out. If so, the first thing we can do is ignore the Star Tribune number completely.

Meanwhile, the Franken number also relies on the premise that either a batch ) of 133 lost votes are found, or that the powers that be will count them as originally tabulated.

Why does the Minnesota Sec of State office report that Coleman is ahead by 687? I've been watching that site for the last two weeks - they updated it every evening. It's consistenly shown Franken ahead over the last week (until today), even though the Star Tribune has shown Coleman ahead. Why is the Star Tribune different?

I predict that when all counts and challenges have been finalized, this race will be and exact tie. Then, when they agree to settle it all with a coin toss, the coin will stand on edge and the face of George Washington on it will break into a crazy laugh.

Let's just have a cage match and be done with it. Jesse Ventura to referee, of course.

Danp: No, the Franken number does not assume that all the challenges will be thrown out. It assumes that the views of the local election judges will prevail among those deciding which challenges will be upheld. And it does not include the missing ballots.

This whole thing has got me thinking that at some point an election is just too close for the winner to have a legitimate claim to a mandate. Perhaps if an election is within a certain percentage (under 500 votes out of a few million cast would certainly count) there should be an automatic run-off?

Maybe that's not feasible though, maybe it's just one of those things that you kinda just have to deal with from time to time.

I find it literally unbelievable that elections with millions of votes cast come down to tiny of numbers of votes as often as they seem to. Without any actual facts to back it up, it suggests that everyone's cheating somehow, or something else weird is going on.

It assumes that the views of the local election judges will prevail - democrat

But doesn't a challenge, by definition, assert that the election judges were wrong? Also as for the missing ballots, I am relying on the update in the TPMelectioncentral link in the last paragraph. Do you have a diffferent source?

But not figuratively 4 votes?

I find it literally unbelievable that elections with millions of votes cast come down to tiny of numbers of votes as often as they seem to. Without any actual facts to back it up, it suggests that everyone's cheating somehow, or something else weird is going on.

Um, why? In a system with plurality or majority-runoff elections, each party is encouraged to expend only those resources necessary to win a bare plurality or majority of votes (any additional resources expended are resources that could be used elsewhere.)

As the tools to evaluate the need get more sophisticated, you'd expect more elections to be very close.

cmdicely: well, on the one hand, I admit I don't quite believe my own argument on this. And your answer is, in fact, the kind of thing that would be an answer. But four votes out of 2.9 million? Are elections now at the point where campaigns can calibrate their efforts well enough to avoid wasting money on that fifth vote? I don't think so.

Now, in the MN situation, with ballot challenges, maybe the parties challenge more desperately as the gap narrows, or something. And you can see a similar thing in Florida2000, because as the count grew closer, the legal fights got more intense.

Or maybe it's all an illusion, and there are enough big elections that one of them eventually would be that close.