With the Minnesota Senate Election Contest heading into it's seventh week, the issue of rejected absentee ballots will likely rise to the forefront of the discussion. While the counting of additional ballots is obviously big news, the number of previously rejected absentee ballots eligible for reconsideration is somewhat vague, although a definitive ceiling does exist. Using a number of court filings as a guide and our previous compilations, I've generated four maps that should hopefully aid in the understanding of the rejected absentee ballot universe.

The court filing exhibits are generally provided at the county level, but occasionally precinct information is entered. In the case of Hennepin County, each municipality is responsible for the sorting and counting of absentee ballots, and despite this distinction within the filings, a municipality map is not available; to account for this degradation of data, Hennepin County is shaded black in the following maps. All of the data is scaled into the county level representation as our maps are only presentable at the county level. The map below provides a graphical visualization of the remaining absentee ballots that may merit inclusion into the ECC's final count.

The maps may initially seem cryptic, but its all explained below. I've also posted html and BBcode for each image so you can help spread the word, and keep others in the know.

Rejected Absentee Ballot Universe by County (490 x 610 Pixels):

HTML Code:



<a href="http://voteforamerica.net"><img src="http://www.voteforamerica.net/image.aspx?Type=Minnesota_29" alt="VoteForAmerica.net Minnesota Senate Rejected Absentee Ballot Universe Map by County" border="0" /></a>

Forum Code:



[url=http://voteforamerica.net] [img]http://voteforamerica.net/image.aspx?Type=Minnesota_29[/img] [/url]

I'll now attempt to explain the peculiarities of each map and the associated colorization process.

Rejected Absentees (0%, 10, 100)

Source: Absentee Ballot Universe [PDF]

The upper left most map of Minnesota depicts the complete set of rejected absentee ballots, as presented by the Coleman and Franken campaigns. The total is arrived at by adding the entirety of Coleman's list with Franken's Y list; Franken's X List includes 781 voters already listed within Coleman's list and is therefore not included in the calculation. The shading of each county represents the number of ballots present within each county, the darker the shading the more voters. The lightest shading is 10 identified rejections or less, the middle shading is 10 to 100 ballots and the darkest shades represents a county with 100 ballots or more. The color of each county represents the final recount result as certified by the MN State Canvassing Board on January 5th. The color purple depicts a county in which the victor was decided by less than 3%. A red or blue county illustrates a county won by either Coleman or Franken respectively. If a county is shaded gray, there are no ballots presented from that county on any list.

The color and shading degradations are identical for all four maps.

Coleman Website (0%, 10, 100)

Source: Coleman's Rejected Absentee Ballot List v3 [PDF]

This map depicts the county of origin for each voter listed at "County Every Valid Vote" portion of Norm Coleman's website. While Coleman's list totals 4,458 voters, it is unlikely that each listed voter will be enfranchised upon reconsideration. Coleman first published this list on or before February 7th but the ECC issued a major ruling on February 13th. This new ruling further restrcited the universe of re-considerable absentee ballots from a list of nineteen categories down to seven.

Franken X+Y List (0%, 10, 100)

Source: Franken's List X [PDF] and Franken's List Y [PDF]

Franken originally submitted 792 rejected voters, but he later ameneded his list after the ECC's February 13th ruling. Exhibit X featured 784 voters who were already entered into evidence, and Exhibit Y featured 804 voters who were exclusively identified by the Franken campaign. Based upon the timing of these two exhibits, its is likely that a vast majority of these 1,585 voters fall within one of the categories outlined by the ECC; but there are going to be exceptions.

Registration Search (0%, 10, 100)

Source: Absentee Ballot Registration Search List [PDF]

The last map reflects the listing of February 26th's order by the Election Contest Court which commissioned a search for registration forms contained within some 1,526 currently rejected absentee ballots. The result of this search was supposed to be completed by Wednesday, March 4th, but the results have yet to be made public. If an envelope is found to have a valid registration card, the entire absentee ballot was almost certainly legally cast and will likely be opened, that is assuming there are no other errors.

In total, there are 5,262 rejected absentee ballots that have not currently been counted, but I expect some of these ballots to be opened and counted within the coming week. The result of the registration search will be the next major milestone in the litigation process and could come as early as Monday.