The Minnesota recount, if allowed to go forward without interference by the parties, will be a good test of optical scanners.

The funny thing about Sarah Palin is that she thinks she is helping herself by doing all of these interviews. The more she talks, the more we know about her, the less her appeal. She will never overcome those initial negative impressions of her – she will only reinforce them. She will always have a small cadre of supporters – those on the religious right who do not value clarity of thought or academic achievement. But the simple truth is that she is not qualified for a high leadership position – she could spend her next four years at Harvard Law, and she still wouldn’t muster up. She doesn’t have the chops. You can put lipstick on a pig …

With respect to Talking Points Memo, today is the day that President-elect Obama sits down to talk with an aggressive, violently extremist world leader, without preconditions.

Here’s a dissenting vote.

See if you can spot a representative of organized labor among Obama’s brain trust:

Keep trying. I’ll check back tomorrow.

The rumors being floated now that Sarah Palin didn’t know the participants in NAFTA, that she didn’t know that Africa was a continent, that she didn’t know that South Africa was a country – it all sounds like utter nonsense, but it is interesting. She’s not terribly bright, but she’s surely not that dumb.

The rumors sound like the results of a meeting in a bar over many beers – people who were angry at Palin decided to do her in. It’s interesting to watch – the Republicans seem to be cleaning their machinery post-McCain. Palin is not the future of the party. That’s been decided.

The problem they have is the extreme loyalty of the Christian base to Palin. Without them, the Republicans are a permanent minority centered in the south.

It’ll be interesting to watch – party leadership is not stupid. In fact, since 1980 or so, they have brilliantly managed their various factions. This could be self-destruction, or it could be just the messy early stages of a much-needed house cleaning.

Three senate races remain undecided, and election machinery/chicanery may play a role in all of them.

Georgia: Saxby Chambliss (R) vs Jim Martin (D): Because Chambliss did not get 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff in December. Georgia is a state that uses “faith based” voting – that is, there are no paper records of votes at the time of voting, and election officials are 100% reliant on the inner workings of the Diebold machinery to fairly report the results. A recount would merely duplicate the original results, as the machines would re-report their original tallies. So it’s completely up for grabs – throw out the pre-election polls and exit polls – there’s no way of knowing who really wins down there. It’s a very stupid state.

Minnesota: Norm Coleman (R) vs Al Franken (D): Coleman currently holds a 236 vote lead, with 2.4 million votes cast. Minnesota uses paper ballots and optical scanning. There will be a full hands-on recount there, so it will be a good test of the o/s machinery. The thing to keep an eye on there is ballot security during the recount process – chain of possession and lock and key and overnight guards and all of that. That’s what messed up the attempted New Hampshire recount earlier this year. But no matter the outcome, the results should be reliable.

Alaska: Ted Stevens (D) vs Mark Begich (D): Stevens surprised everyone with an election night turnaround. Alaska sounds like it is totally corrupted. Just a few facts: The election was hotly contested; there were long lines in early voting; a very popular favorite daughter was on the presidential ballot; participation in the state primary (before the Palin nomination) was up 12.4% over four years ago – forget all of that – election officials say that turnout was down 11% this year. Pre-election polls showed both Ted Stevens and Don Young down by 6-10 points. They also showed that the gap between McCain and Obama had closed to a 14% lead for McCain – final tally was a whopping 25 point win for McCain. Stevens “won” with a 16 point turnaround from polls, and Young won too. It’s an election night miracle!

The State of Alaska has been sued twice now, in 2004 and 2006, to get them to release raw election data for people to review. In the 2004 suit, prior to release, Diebold was allowed to “manipulate the data”. The election department up there is a crawling can of worms. If there is a recount, which is unlikely anyway, it would be overseen by the Palin Administration. Don’t hope for any sunlight up there this winter. There will be no mavericky challenging of the Republican election machine.

I didn’t consider this: Alaska is a couple of times zones over, and after everyone heard there that Obama had won, interest dissipated and lines dwindled. That doesn’t explain poll discrepancies, but might explain low turnout.

Here are state-by-state results with (exit polls) and counted vote (Obama-McCain), and the difference on the Obama side between exits and official count:

Florida (52-49) 50-48 -2
Iowa (58-42) 53-44 -5
Missouri (52-48) 49-49 -3
North Carolina (52-48) 49-49 -3
New Hampshire (57-43) 56-44 -1
Nevada (55-45) 55-42 -0-
Pennsylvania (57-42) 54-44 -3
Ohio (54-45) 51-47 -3
Wisconsin (58-42) 56-42 -2
Indiana (52-48) 49-48 -3
New Mexico (56-43) 56-41 -0-
Minnesota (56-39) 54-43 -2
Michigan (60-39) 57-40 -3
Georgia (47-51) 46-52 -1
West Virginia (45-55) 42-55 -3

What to conclude? Too soon to know anything, but this is consistent with 2004 – the exit polls are consistently saying that the Democratic candidate is getting more votes than the final tallies say. In 2004, they tried to blame it on the “Reluctant Republican Respondent”, but that was disproven. There was no such effect.

In a perfect world, one would expect exit polls to fall within margin of error on either side of the ballot, with Republicans as often coming up short as Democrats. But it doesn’t work that way. Something is amiss.

On to more important trivia.

Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff? That does it. I’m fed up with Barack Obama.