Maybe it has been explained to everybody else’s satisfaction, but I don’t remember reading this odd fact about voter behavior anywhere before. Now, for the first time, I grasp what the hell has actually been going on in the Franken-Coleman mess.

Minnesota’s modern optical scan machines are astonishingly accurate when the voter completely fills the oval with a black pen. But 7 out of 7 peer-reviewed academic studies confirm that Democrats just do not follow this instruction as well as Republicans. Since the recount tallies any ballot with clear evidence of voter intent, Democratic candidate Al Franken’s march to victory was steady — just as predicted here. The State Canvassing Board, including two Supreme Court justices (and only 1 out of 5 members a Democrat), certified Franken’s margin at 225 votes after a hand recount.

Minnesota’s modern optical scanners had close to zero counting errors where the voter filled out the oval, as all obedient persons well-trained in taking SATs reliably did. But 6 out of every 10,000 voters didn’t follow directions, didn’t completely fill in an oval, or made other markings that the machine couldn’t be expected to interpret. That’s 1,672 ballots that were inspected by hand and interpreted by the Canvassing Board, many of them by less-educated or simply rebellious voters.