This Anoka County voter was clearly ready for the end of campaign season. This ballot has an almost poetic quality.

In case you have trouble reading it, the poem goes like this, all entered as write-in candidates:

You need to
make voting
easier to do
This is
ridiculous
Enough with the
political ads
This is
what happens
when you
bombard me
with them
Al Franken and
Norm Coleman
are so annoying
they’re repugnant
From now on
I’ll give up
my right
to vote
if I get
beat down with
political ads
Advertise that
Minnesota
I’d
rather
have
Nick
DiPalo
for
President
Ha
Ha
Ha
Ha
Ha

From the Ramsey County recount site, this tidbit from staff writer Curt Brown:

Ramsey County election judge Diane Follmer said counting stacks of ballots to 25 for three straight days can get mind-numbing.
Sometimes, she’ll count in French to stay alert.

“When someone at my table sneezed yesterday, instead of saying: ‘Gesundheit,’ I said: ‘Seventeen.”

Based on what the first-day totals of the Great Minnesota Recount hint at, the winner of the U.S. Senate race will/might/could be….

ATTENTION PARTISANS: HOLD YOUR FIRE. THIS IS STRICTLY HYPOTHETICAL CALCULATOR WORK. CAVEATS TO FOLLOW.

The winner will/might/could be…(drum roll, please)…Al Franken – by 12 votes, out of the nearly 2.9 million-ballots that were cast.

Here’s how the numbers work: Franken started the day Wednesday unofficially trailing Sen. Norm Coleman by 215 votes. By the end of the day, with 18 percent of the state’s votes counted, Franken had shaved that lead to 174 votes. If that pattern continues to hold in the remaining 82 percent of the precincts (admittedly a BIG if), Franken would pick up 227.7 votes. And that would leave him the winner, by 12.7 votes.

Of course, reality will complicate such a neat conclusion to the tightest statewide race in Minnesota history. For starters, votes recounted the first day came from precincts that overall tended to be slightly more Republican, which could help Franken in the coming days, as more Democratic-leaning areas are counted (among them the majority of votes still outstanding in the overwhelmingly Democratic central cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul). At the same time, Franken isn’t likely to duplicate the disproportionately big bump he got Wednesday from precincts in St. Louis County where old voting machines failed to properly read results.

All of that said, the final outcome could well hinge on the ballots that both candidates have challenged.
So far, Coleman’s representatives have challenged a total of 146, while Franken’s have challenged 123. If that initial pattern continues (again, big if), Coleman will have challenged 811 once all the votes are recounted, Franken 683.

If all of the challenges are dismissed, Franken’s 12.7-vote winning margin holds. For the sake of argument, if half of both candidates’ challenges are upheld, Coleman gets a 64-vote edge, giving him the win. If a quarter are upheld, he gets a 32-vote bump, also enough to hold onto his seat. If only a tenth of the challenges are upheld, Coleman picks up 12.8 votes, one-tenth of a vote more than Franken gets from the hand recount.

Now, get your calculators out and contribute your own ways of analyzing the numbers so far.

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, who suggested that Barack Obama harbored “anti-American” views as a presidential candidate, said in a Wednesday television appearance that Democrats in Congress are trying to “enact socialism.”

Bachmann, who drew a strong backlash after previous comments that appeared to question the patriotism of her Democratic opponents, attempted to deflect some of the criticism in a TV appearance earlier this week, saying that her “anti-American” remarks had become an “urban legend.”

But she resumed her tough talk during Wednesday’s appearance on Fox News with Neil Cavuto, who interviewed her about the national stakes in the recount battle in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.

Bachmann, making a point about how the Republican minority can recover from its Election Day reverses, said “what we have to do is give our positive alternatives to socialism.”

“Now that we will have a Democrat in the White House and, of course, running both branches of government, our job will be to make the very positive, distinct difference,” she continued. “Not necessarily to help the Democrats enact socialism, in fact to fight it.”

The term socialism, often associated with a 20th century repudiation of capitalism in favor of a government-controlled economy, is an echo of the waning weeks of the Republican presidential campaign of Ariz. Sen. John McCain, who also used it to refer to Obama’s policies.

Explaining Obama’s victory, Bachmann said that “a lot of Americans didn’t realize it was Democrats that controlled the House and Senate for the last two years.”
“I think the American people at the end of the day will say, whoa, wait a minute. I didn’t vote for socialism, did I?”

Cavuto, pushing back slightly, noted that “Republicans kind of got the socialism thing going” with the $700 billion financial bailout, which emanated from the Bush administration and won significant Republican support in Congress, including McCain’s.

“It did emanate from the White House,” said Bachmann, who voted against the bailout bill. “However, it was the Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House that passed it.”

During his tour of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, Democratic Senate hopeful Al Franken was quoted as saying he’s “cautiously optimistic” he’ll prevail in his recount battle with Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.

Now, that’s standard politico-speak. But Franken was singing a somewhat different tune as recently as 2005 in his book, “The Truth (With Jokes),” writing,

Cautiously optimistic? That’s not good. That’s an optimist’s way of saying, “We’re screwed.” I’ve instructed my wife that if a doctor ever tells her that he’s “cautiously optimistic” about my test results, she is to pull the plug immediately. (Source: “The Truth (With Jokes)”, p. 12)

(hat tip: RedState)

Wednesday, 3 p.m.: Based on early returns from the recount, it appears that a fair amount of the change in vote totals is the result of challenged ballots. A challenged ballot is taken out of the mix, temporarily at least, and the effect is to reduce the total for the candidate who got that vote.

However, those ballots may still come into play, since they’ll go to the state Canvassing Board, which will make the decision on which candidate gets the vote or if it stays out of the mix.

Wednesday a.m. Pretty quiet so far, by all accounts, but there’s this scene-setter from Duluth, courtesy of staff writer Larry Oakes:

As they waited for the St. Louis County recount to begin, supporters of Norm Coleman and Al Franken sat on opposite sides of the St. Louis County Board room – Coleman supporters on the right and Franken supporters on the left.
Naturally.
Asked for an explanation, Franken supporter Larry Anderson, a union organizer from Duluth, said: “I think the Coleman people got here first and automatically went to the right.,”

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, appearing Tuesday night on Fox News’ show with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, derided President-Elect Barack Obama as “more of the same” over reports that many of his new appointments are recycled Clintonistas.

The Minnesota Republican also accused DFL Senate candidate Al Franken of trying to “stuff the ballot box” in his recount struggle with GOP incumbent Norm Coleman.

All the while, Bachmann managed to reserve enough ammo to dismiss as an “urban legend” reports that she had suggested on a pre-election episode of the “Hardball” show with MSNBC host Chris Matthews that Obama and other members of Congress were “anti-American,” and that the media should investigate them as such.

Resident Fox liberal Alan Colmes, who read a transcript of Bachmann’s “anti-American” quote from her appearance on MSNBC, offered to have her watch the video clip of her remarks on his own web site. But the segment ended before Bachmann could fully respond.

Not, however, before Bachmann pummeled Obama over some of his recent presidential appointments, including the pick of former President Clinton official Eric Holder as Obama’s new attorney general.

Hannity, joined by Bachmann, faulted Holder for his role in Clinton’s pardon of billionaire financier Marc Rich, who had been indicted for tax evasion. Holder also has come under attack for his role in sending 6-year-old Cuban Elian Gonzalez back to the island nation during the Clinton presidency.

“I don’t think any American sees this as change,” Bachmann said. “It’s back to the future.”

Bachmann, who has become a regular conservative commentator on cable television talk shows in recent months, reserved some of her sharpest barbs for the Senate race recount process in the Minnesota, where Franken has sought to review rejected absentee ballots.

“He wants to stuff the ballot box with rejected ballots,” said Bachmann, adding that the dispute “calls into question what the record is and who’s watching the books.”

Her comments about the fairness of the recount seemed at odds with those of GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty as well as with Coleman himself. They have both expressed confidence in the recount process in recent days, though some campaign and GOP party officials have criticized Franken’s aggressive lawyering in the recount.

Bachmann’s appearance on the Fox TV show also represented a change in tone from her most recent remarks about Obama. On Nov. 6, two days after the election, Bachmann was quoted in Politico saying she was “extremely grateful that we have an African American who won this year.” Although she supported GOP hopeful John McCain in the presidential election, she told Politico that Obama’s victory was “a tremendous signal we sent.”

Those remarks were widely seen as an attempt to soften her pre-election criticism of Obama, including her remarks on Matthews’ show that the Illinois Democrat “may have anti-American views'’ and that reporters should investigate whether other Democrats may be “anti-America.'’

Reminded of those remarks by Colmes Tuesday night, Bachmann suggested, as she has before, that she was baited and trapped by the media, which created an “urban legend” about what she says she really said.

“What I said was ‘do your job,’” Bachmann said. “That’s what I said.”

Rep. Jim Ramstad’s name is being bandied about in D.C. as a possible “drug czar,” or head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

President-Elect Barack Obama is filling out his team, and Politico, a respected Washington tabloid that covers all things Washington, has mentioned the retiring Minnesota Republican as a potentially popular and bipartisan pick.

Asked for confirmation, Ramstad told the Star Tribune, “It’s humbling to be mentioned for this important position, and that’s all I can say.”

Sources close to Ramstad, a recovering alcoholic and longtime proponent of mental health and drug treatment, say he might be interested. Although Ramstad cited fatigue with the weekly Washington commute in his decision to retire after 18 years in Congress, sources say that could be trumped by his passion for helping addicts like himself.

Ramstad’s spokesman, Dean Peterson, told Politico that it’s “gratifying to hear Jim’s name being mentioned for drug czar.” Peterson noted that Ramstad has worked for 27 years on anti-drug efforts in Congress and the Minnesota Senate.

“As a recovering person, he’s worked every day to help those suffering the ravages of chemical addiction,” Peterson told Politico.

The speculation comes as President Bush readies to sign landmark mental health “parity” legislation on Thursday that was pushed in large part by Ramstad and his protégé in treatment: Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I. The bill — named for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, who also championed the cause — aims to give people with mental illnesses the same access to insurance and treatment as people with physical illnesses.

The Obama camp has not responded to Star Tribune inquiries about the Drug Czar report.

Sen. Norm Coleman, somewhat on the fence about legislation providing $25 billion for the struggling auto industry, plans to meet a top Ford Motor Co. executive Tuesday in Washington.

Coleman’s office announced Monday that he plans to meet with Joseph Hinrichs, Ford’s vice president for global manufacturing. The two last met in June, when Coleman was trying to win assurances about keeping the Ford plant open in St. Paul, where the company produces Ford Ranger pick-up trucks.

The Ford plant in St. Paul still seems to be foremost in Coleman’s mind. His spokesman, LeRoy Coleman, said the Minnesota Republican wants to “discuss their commitments toward long-term profitability as well as the St. Paul plant’s potential role as the producer of advanced, fuel-efficient vehicles.”

The announcement comes a day after Coleman released a statement saying that while he wants the St. Paul plant to remain viable, he has “strong concerns” than any support for the ailing automakers include strong taxpayer protections. Among those protections, he said, are labor-management agreements that represent “this century’s needs,” as well as caps on executive compensation and a “realistic blueprint for returning to profitability.”

On that last score, Coleman called for a “Detroit Auto Revolution” for investing in new auto technology and updated cars that reflect today’s energy concerns.

A Senate vote on the legislation is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, the same day DFL Senate candidate Al Franken is scheduled to arrive in Washington to confer with Democratic leaders about the Senate race recount in Minnesota.

Officials in Lake County say a typo explains how Al Franken’s vote total from a Two Harbors, Minn., precinct grew by 246 votes.

The county auditor told the Lake County News-Chronicle and the Duluth New Tribune that Franken’s total in the precinct was 273, but the 3 was left off the number reported to the state on Election Night, so it came across as 27.

The mistake was corrected the next morning, putting the number at 273 — 246 more than 27.

Norm Coleman’s total in the precinct was 175 and the count for the IP’s Dean Barkley was 74. The vote breakdown in the presidential race was 336 for Barack Obama and 175 for John McCain.

A missing digit also was the explanation for another revision. In Pine County, officials said 124 votes for Franken in one township were initially reported as 24, because the 1 was accidentally omitted before the number was corrected.