2008 election

Rep. Michele Bachmann's remarks about President-elect Barack Obama's possible "anti-American" views have earned her distinction as one of the year's "most embarrassing re-elected members of Congress."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW) released a list Monday of eight U.S. House members and one senator who "stand out for their inability to conduct themselves in a manner that respects the office they hold."

CREW, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to "promote ethics and responsibility in government and public life by targeting government officials … who sacrifice the common good to special interests," referred to Bachmann's Oct. 17 appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" as "Joe McCarthy politics."

Are you heartily sick of the Norm Coleman vs. Al Franken cliffhanger? Can you handle one more perspective on it?

New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins has a good one.

"Right now, the incumbent Republican, Norm Coleman, is about 200 votes ahead of the Democratic challenger, the former comedian Al Franken," Collins writes. "In a race where 2.9 million votes were case, Coleman is leading 41.99 percent to 41.98 percent.

"You may note that there are a lot of percents missing. They went to Dean Barkley, an underfunded Independence Party candidate who did rather well by running on a platform that boiled down to: 1) Not crazy 2) Not Norm Coleman 3) Not Al Franken."

Four judges will join Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie on the state canvassing board next week to certify results in the state's U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and his DFL challenger, Al Franken.

At last count, only 206 votes separated the two candidates.

Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson, Ramsey County District Court Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin and Ramsey County District Court Assistant Chief Judge Edward Cleary will be part of the canvassing board.

Under state law, the canvassing board is headed by the secretary of state and must include two state Supreme Court justices and two district court judges.

The board, which will resolve disputes over ballots that were challenged during the recount process and certify the results, will convene at 1 p.m. Tuesday. The recount will begin the next day.

Hours after a liberal Minnesota organization called for an investigation into possible ethics violations by Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., the senator said he would welcome any such probe.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a self-described "progressive" group, sent letters to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, calling for a full investigation into recent allegations that businessman Nasser Kazeminy illegally funneled $75,000 to Coleman.

The alliance also posted a petition seeking an ethics investigation on its website Wednesday afternoon, urging readers to sign it.

There's an odd phenomenon creeping into the social networking site Facebook: post-election "de-friending."

A weekend post on Jezebel.com, "How Facebook Status Updates are Ruining Your Post-Election Social Life," refers (somewhat accurately) to Facebook as "that creepy computerized yearbook that allows us all to keep in touch with that kid who sat three rows behind us in second grade and scratched himself in improper places all through math class."

And it notes that after last week's election, in which Barack Obama was elected president in an historic victory, a lot of people on Facebook have been brought up short by their online friends' status updates – those throwaway lines that start out "So-and-so is …" and let you fill in the blanks.

One of the commenters on Jezebel.com posted this:

Although DFLers failed to achieve a 90-seat supermajority in the Minnesota House in last week's election, at least one analyst expects the party to be in a much stronger position two years from now than it was going into this election.

The bottom line, says Eric Ostermeier, who writes for SmartPolitics, the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs blog, is that it will be difficult for Republicans to regain control of the House in the 2010 election.

Ostermeier broke down the numbers in a post-election blog post last week.

"Perhaps more important than netting two additional seats (which would have given the DFL a veto-proof majority in the House), the DFL deepened (its) support in districts throughout the state," Ostermeier wrote.

The DFL and the GOP continued to exchange Minnesota House seats as the election results trickled in early Wednesday morning.

The DFL House Caucus is poised to add two seats to its majority, said caucus communications director Andrew Wittenborg. That would give DFLers 87 out of 134 House seats. But that’s short of the 90 seats they need in order to have a veto-proof majority.

Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, was narrowly defeated with all precincts reporting by the early morning hours. Erickson, the lead Republican on the House Education Finance Committee, lost to Gail Jackson by a difference of 50.12 percent to 49.67 percent.

In District 41B, a seat held by Rep. Neil Peterson, R-Bloomington, DFLer Paul Rosenthal beat Jan Schneider 52.56 percent to 47.01 percent. Peterson lost in the September primary to Schneider. Peterson drew criticism from his own party after he voted to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of this year’s transportation finance bill.

The vote between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is quite tight right now, but many precincts in the Arrowhead haven't reported yet. It looks like there might more than a thousand net votes for Franken in St. Louis, Itasca and Carlton counties. St. Louis County is at 24,331 to 38,920 with 43 precincts that haven't been reported in a county (that's going 54-33 for Franken).

The numbers are jumping around on the SOS website, so we can't say what's happening -- Coleman might be pulling away. As of 2:35 a.m., the total for Coleman is 1,159,480, Franken 1,146,967. At 2:38, that gap jumped to 1,168,055-1,154,266. However, the key Iron Range-Arrowhead DFL constituency is coming in strong for Franken.

If there's a chance, it's here!
UPDATE 2:53 a.m.: The Coleman lead is down to 6,802 on the SOS site, with 4,044 of 4,130 precincts reporting statewide.
UPDATE 3:05 a.m.: Coleman's lead has ticked back up to 6,993, with 4,056 precincts counted, so it looks pretty tough for Franken to pull it off. However, a recount might be in the making.
UPDATE 3:15 a.m.: It looks like an automatic recount is likely. From the 2006 SOS recount manual:

When I was a little boy, in our house just west of Chicago, my dad, the first full-time civil rights reporter in Chicago, introduced me to a young singer named Bob Dylan by playing "Blowin' in the Wind" for me and trying to tell me what it means.

Tonight, in an auditorium at the University of Minnesota, I listened as an old Dylan told an excited crowd of nearly 5,000, "It seems like we are going to have change now," before closing his concert with a moving version of "Blowin' in the Wind."

Tonight, I knew what it meant – it meant Democrat Barack Obama had won the race for president.

At the Republican Party's election party in Bloomington, the mood  is casually expectant. The state has already been called for Barack Obama,  and other results are trickling in.

Several moments ago a whoop went up when FOX News showed Rep. Michele  Bachmann with a 4-point lead over challenger El Tinklenberg with 19 percent of precincts reporting, but the excitement was short-lived. No one made much noise  when FOX showed Sen. Norm Coleman slightly ahead of challenger Al Franken with a handful of  districts reporting. This is clearly a crowd that operates on more  solid evidence than that.

So far the most notable thing to report is that there is nothing  notable to report. There is steady buzz of discussion, about what  you'd expect at a wedding reception while everyone waits for the bride  and groom to show up.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar addressed an ebullient DFL crowd Tuesday night at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Paul, and she spoke in the past tense.

"Hope has triumphed over fear," Klobuchar told the crowd, which was becoming progressively more giddy as it monitored news reports of state after state going to Barack Obama.

Klobuchar also told the DFLers that voter turnout in Minnesota was "over 80 percent."

Just before the polls closed at 8 p.m., a quick check of several Burnsville and Eagan polling places showed no lines of impatient voters, and no problems.

James Miller, an election official at Mary Mother of the Church in Burnsville, said there were 2,400 registered voters in that precinct, and 175 more were registered there on Tuesday.

Miller, a five-time election judge, estimated that there were two to three times as many absentee ballots as usual this year.

"Most people voted early," Miller said. The peak time at the precinct was between 2 and 3 p.m., and voting went smoothly.

Several voters said the longest wait at that precinct was between 30 and 45 minutes.

Miller estimated a 90 percent turnout in the precinct.

The classic rock tune "Freebird" blared shortly after 7:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel in Bloomington. But music was just about the only noise as the GOP faithful slowly started to arrive at the state GOP's election night headquarters.

Two large TV screens in the corners of the hall showed Fox News and CNN.

GOP Chairman Ron Carey was upbeat as he chatted with the assembled throng of reporters. He said presidential candidate John McCain appeared to be holding his own as the early results rolled in.

Carey also said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the state House election results where DFLers have enjoyed a wide majority during the last two years. He said he's hoping to take back some seats that were lost by narrow margins in 2006. He said he was shooting for a net gain in the House as the night draws on and the results in all 134 state House contests come in.

Lexi and Cali Weddle were excited just to be on the election night ballroom floor. The two sisters, ages 11 and and 9, repectively, from Andover, have to wake up early for school on Wednesday. But they were charged about the buzz that was increasing around the room.

"It's really cool to see how many people are here and want to see them win," Cali said.

Their mom, Susan, said witnessing the election up close is an education in itself.

NBC News and CNN declared at 8 p.m. that Minnesota's 10 electoral votes will go to Democrat Barack Obama.

The latest count, according to NBC: 175 electoral votes for Obama and 76 for Republican John McCain. A total of 270 are needed to win the presidency.

NBC's Tom Brokaw remarked on St. Paul's hosting of the Republican National Convention (which closed exactly two months ago tonight, with the nomination of McCain). "I don't think Minnesota got much of a bump from having the RNC in St. Paul," he said.

When CNN announced that the state's electoral votes had gone to Obama, a (predictable) cheer went up at the DFL celebration party in St. Paul's Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Minnesota DFL Chairman Brian Melendez addressed the Crowne Plaza gathering: "Have you ever seen an election go on as long as this one?" he asked (a sentiment that both parties can no doubt agree with).

Melendez also noted that the Obama campaign made 1 million voter contacts on Tuesday alone.

The residents of a 300-person student housing cooperative were turned away from their Minneapolis polling location Tuesday because they provided "non-conforming" proof of residency, according to a national nonpartisan "voter protection coalition."

The coalition, Election Protection, reported that the students weren't allowed to vote because the rent statement presented as proof of residency was addressed to election officials rather than the students. Election officials also said the housing cooperative couldn't make changes to the rent statement. 

Election Protection officials asked Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's office to allow changes to the rent statement to be made; Ritchie's office ruled that the co-op could issue corrected rent statements addressed to the students, and those statements were issued so that the students could vote.