UPDATE 12/2: There are five counties still in the recount process; 82 counties have finished in the Minnesota governor's race. According to one local news source:
The Dayton campaign says that as of 8 p.m. Wednesday night (12/1), the net gain was 228, making Dayton’s total margin 9,031 votes compared to the 8,770 after the canvass.
There is a minor discrepancy in how counts are being tabulated. Some counties are including frivolously challenged ballots in the respective totals, where there is overwhelmingly clear evidence of how the ballot should be accepted. In those counties, the frivolously challenged ballots, which are nearly all from the Emmer side of the controversy and would therefore benefit candidate Mark Dayton even further, are counted in with the other totals, but separated out for a final review by the canvassing board. In other counties, all ballot challenges, the legitimate, and the stupid, are counted separately from the candidate totals. This appears to be the explanation for differing total gains for Dayton, and gains/losses for Emmer.
As the totals come closer to their final numbers, it is evident that Tom Emmer is not going to have enough votes to win, even if he were to succeed on every ballot challenge - he has a greater chance of being hit by lightning, twice, than doing that. MN GOP chair Tony Sutton is threatening a law suit regardless of the outcome, but so far that has not been supported by anyone speaking for Tom Emmer. It is Emmer who will make that decision, not the contentious and partisan-to-a-fault Sutton.
Meanwhile the Right Wing media and blogging machine is in full propaganda mode, distributing their fact-less feckless message, like this one. The more spurious, scurrilous ones are always conveniently anonymous; it makes it impossible to fact check. But they are always light on the provided facts as well. For example, the anonymous email offered up to prove that SEIU staff co opted or coerced an Alzheimer's patient's vote in 2008 to commit voter fraud, stealing the senatorial election for Franken....apparently forgetting, or at least hoping no one would notice, that voter records and voter registrations are public, and could easily be checked. (So far, no checking has been done - because that would prove the story was false.) This one, the claim of 103 otherwise blank, consecutive ballots for Dayton in Hennepin County similarly reeks of hoax. If this were legitimate, it would make the news. If this were legitimate, both sides would have requested copies of the ballots, and been given them, but no such copies have been shown to exist. If this were legitimate.....there wouldn't be any withholding of names to protect the hoaxer needed. In fact, this is crap, and no one who for a moment thinks critically would take it seriously.
The Right Wing media routinely misinforms their audience; rarely do they make a correction. The Right Wing audience of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and certain right wing political figures like Bachmann don't seem to care; they actively want to be lied to by their media. If I found any media source to be as factually inaccurate as these, I would stop relying on them for information. I would condemn and protest their lack of factual content, and demand better.
I am confounded why the Right Wing doesn't do the same. But I predict we will see more of this misinformation and disinformation until the election is concluded. And heck, we will see more of it even after a governor is inaugurated.
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