U.S. Senate

In eighth-grade civics, I learned that the U.S. Senate had, and would continue to have, 100 members. Well, Mr. Miller, seems you didn’t tell me the whole story.
When the new Senate is sworn in next week, it will most likely be a team of 98, following declarations by Senate leaders that Minnesota and Illinois will [...]

In a previous post, I ran some calculations to explain why it’s not in Sen. Norm Coleman’s interest to allow all of the improperly rejected absentee ballots to be counted in the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. Basically, if the voting patterns follow the election-night trends, challenger Al Franken will gain a net 52 votes [...]

Nice post, Matt, but I’m afraid you’re a bit off the mark. I wrote the real scoop on Burris and Blagojevich in the Washington City Paper, where I do my serious political reporting.
Not really sure how the MSM got this one so wrong.

The Minnesota State Canvassing Board finally closed the books on challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate race, and challenger Al Franken holds 50-vote lead after a number of clerical errors were resolved.
Now we turn to the 1,346 absentee ballots that were identified by election officials as improperly rejected. The two campaigns must agree that a [...]

The Minnesota Senate race hit another bump today as the campaigns of Al Franken and Sen. Norm Coleman disagreed over which absentee ballots to count, to the surprise of no one.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Dec. 18 that all improperly rejected absentee ballots must be counted, and local election officials found that 1,346 ballots fit [...]

Today the Minnesota Supreme Court removed one of the few remaining obstacles to Al Franken’s ascension to the U.S. Senate when it denied Sen. Norm Coleman campaign’s request to prevent about 130 alleged double-counted ballots from being counted.
The Coleman team argued that these ballots, whose originals and duplicates could not be properly matched, had been [...]

The Minnesota State Canvassing Board today finally completed its review of challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate recount, and Democratic-Farmer-Labor challenger Al Franken holds a 48-vote lead over Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
The Coleman campaign, getting a bit desperate as Franken emerges as the likely winner, this morning began challenging the challenges, arguing that 16 [...]

With nearly all of the challenged ballots tallied, Democratic-Farmer-Labor challenger Al Franken holds a 48-vote lead over Sen. Norm Coleman in the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, reports the Star Tribune. That figure is consistent with the Franken campaign’s prediction of a 35- to 50-vote lead.
Of course, it’s nearly inconceivable that this lead will hold. [...]

When the Minnesota State Canvassing Board completes its review of challenged ballots tomorrow, the Al Franken campaign expects to hold a slim lead of 35 to 50 votes. But a state Supreme Court decision tomorrow in Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s favor on the issue of duplicate ballots could easily restore the lead to Coleman, possibly [...]

The Anchorage Daily News reports that by tomorrow we might know whether Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has managed to hang on to his Senate seat
Most of the 24,000 ballots left to be counted are from Anchorage voters, a good sign for Stevens’ Democratic challenger, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who took the lead in the vote [...]