Spinplications of Recount News

Today, Al Franken pulled ahead in the U.S. Senate recount. A couple dozen steps still need to play out before we have a winner, but this is a milestone. After all, Franken has been behind in the media counts for weeks.
We at SRC are not recount experts, but we are spin savants. [...]

Election System Enema

By national standards, Minnesota has a very good election system. And for all our griping about the U.S. Senate recount, this recount will serve to make our elections even better.
First, over the years well-meaning but misinformed election judges apparently have been rejecting legal absentee ballots, inadvertantly disenfranchising thousands of Minnesotans in the process. [...]

The Importance of The Right Messenger

Most of the public relations around the U.S. Senate recount has come in the form of dueling flack attacks. The Franken campaign has been at least as over-the-top as the Coleman campaign, including its gratuitous mention in today’s recount briefing of the Kazeminy-Coleman FBI investigation. (Holy kitchen sink strategy, what does Kazeminy have [...]

Franken Sense and Blur

The outlook of the Minnesota U.S. Senate election recount is obviously blurry. The source of much of the confusion is related to how challenged ballots should be characterized during the period before the State Canvassing Board rules on them.
FRANKEN VIEWPOINT. The Franken campaign says their count now shows them 22 votes ahead of [...]

Normy the Beer Man?

In the marketing world, it’s called extending the campaign. You take a message delivered at a 50,000 foot level, usually via broadcast ads, and then employ PR tactics that bring that message down-to-earth, where the target audience can touch, feel and experience it.
Or even get a buzz off of it.
Steve Novick, a candidate [...]