Yesterday, my good friend and NARN colleague John Hinderaker of Power Line appeared on Hannity & Colmes to square off against former Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis about the election shenanigans in Minnesota’s Senate race. For some reason, Davis appears obsessed with Martians as he attempts to dismiss concerns about the odd changes in vote totals for Norm Coleman and Al Franken over the past few days:

Davis wants to paint all questions about the tabulation and transmission process as a belief in little green men. Did Davis treat them so cavalierly in 2000, when Florida had didn’t have troubles in reporting its vote? I don’t recall Lanny Davis sitting quietly, laughing at Democratic objections to ballots designed by Democrats and invoking Marvin the Martian on national television.

The allegation that all of these changes fall within the statistical expectations of error is simply erroneous. As John points out, that would require the changes to exhibit roughly the same characteristics as the total vote itself. Instead, all of the “corrections” went inexorably in one direction. How likely is it in a 42/42/18 race that 100% of the changes favor one candidate?

Given the failures that we’ve already seen — including a massive failure in county that holds almost 25% of Minnesota’s population — it doesn’t take a faith in little green men to wonder whether we’re seeing a corruption of the process.