It has become apparent that there is a lot of misinformation in the media concerning the Coleman-Franken Senate recount. There is no reporting of the discrepancies in the recount process. The rules for the recount have not been uniform across the state. Rules that were applied in Martin County were not the same rules used in counties like Hennepin, Ramsey and St Louis. I helped with the recount in Faribault and Martin counties. The instructions were to physically count all the ballots.

When that was done in Martin County, the count came up five ballots short of what the machine had counted due to machine malfunction. Coleman lost five votes in Martin County. In one precinct in Hennepin County, the ballots were 130 short of the machine count; however, the auditor used the machine count. The absentee ballots have been the greatest contention; again the rules weren’t the same statewide. Absentee ballots that were rejected in Martin County were not rejected in Hennepin, Ramsey, and St Louis counties. I personally know of an absentee voter here in Martin County who had the absentee ballot rejected because it was not signed on the correct line.

The law says that this ballot should be rejected, but in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties hundreds of these ballots were counted. The panel of judges declared that some votes were illegal, yet there are hundreds of these illegal votes included in the count. This was like changing the rules after the game was played. Another reason this is such a huge mess is there are at least 25 precincts that have more votes than voters.

Unfortunately, whoever comes out on top now will not be seen as the legitimate winner. One way to clear this up would be to set up a new election.

Neal Breitbarth

Fairmont