MN Sen Recount (UPDATE: Stuart Smalley certified winner, lawsuit forthcoming)

[Stranger in a strange land]

Is a 142 a good lead for Coleman at this point?

If the trend continues at the same rate, he'll lose by a couple.  Also, we don't know who has challenged more ballots that are obviously for the other candidate -- if Coleman's challenges are dumber then that's more votes for Franken.

Considering that the biggest Franken areas haven't been hit up yet..  Considering that Coleman has challenged more thank Franken, the fact that Minnesota strongly went for Obama (meaning if there are an equal number of miscounted undervotes for both Obama and McCain, that’s more votes Franken) and the fact that it’s people who make mistakes on ballots tend to favor the Democrats (we’re dumb), I think this looks slightly bad for Norm.

The most-educated and least-educated voters tend to be Democrats. Somebody who's never had to take a scantron test might not know to bubble in the circle on an optical scan ballot.

[Stranger in a strange land]

This is excellent news. I had all but reconciled myself to loss.

It was inevitable and you know it.

That certainly would have made the most sense in a situation like this.

Oh no, I really thought he'd steal this one. Fortunately, we stole it instead.

This is one reason to like a runoff system for major races. The revote will usually remove any idea that one side or the other "stole" the election. It also gives the 3rd party voters a chance to decide what (if anything) they want to do with their vote.

I think this whole recount debacle makes a pretty strong case for instant runoff voting.

[Stranger in a strange land]

County governments are non-partisan,

Nobody is really non-partisan.

No but it does mean that there's not so much of a correlation of those elected and the county's general lean. Both Hennepin and Ramsey county have Republican sheriffs for example elected on a non-partisan ballot (though Ramsey's barely won and is likely toast in 2010 after his RNC crap.)

BTW, I wonder if this'll change the Republicans staunch anti-IRV stance, as exit polls showed Coleman would've won a two-way race.

really? Coleman only ran 2 points behind McCain but Franken ran about 12 behind Obama.