Election-Campaign Law

A quick note on Minnesota

By Charles Stewart III

I will try to produce a quick memo on this tonight, but here are some things I’m seeing in the pattern of “roll off” (a possible proxy for “residual votes”) in the Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota:

1. Roll-off appears to be greater in precincts that gave Obama a larger vote
2. Roll-off appears to be greater in larger precincts
3. Roll-off appears to be variable across counties

In addition, the small literature comparing optically scanned ballots with a recount finds about a 0.5% difference between the initial and final count.  Back-of-the envelope calculations suggest that we might expect about 15,000 more votes to show up in a Minnesota recount, if this literature (by Herron and Wand, Ansolabehere and Reaves, etc.) is applicable here.

Full post as published by Election Updates on November 06, 2008 (boomark / email).