Today was a big day for the recount in Minnesota. The current "official" tally shows incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman leading by 192 votes, however, the challenged ballots have yet to be counted (that will be done next week from Dec. 16 - 19). There are ongoing issues over 133 missing ballots and a large number of absentee ballots, which may have been incorrectly rejected. Those two issues was addressed today by the five-member Canvassing Board. Geek that I am, I watched the board's hearing live today via TheUptake.org.
As reported at MinnPost.com, things went well for Al Franken at the hearing:
The board has decided to count the missing 133 ballots from a Minneapolis precinct over the objections of the Norm Coleman campaign that lost ballots couldn't be recounted. According to the machine count done on Election Night, Franken won among those ballots by 46 votes. Friday's Canvassing Board's unanimous decision o go by the Election Night count means Franken keeps that 46-vote advantage.The Franken campaign wanted those absentee ballots counted, so this is good news. The Coleman campaign doesn't want the ballots counted, so they're going to court.
Secondly, and potentially more significant, the board unanimously encouraged every county to sort its pile of rejected absentee ballots, look for those that were disqualified improperly, open and count those ballots and report the revised results to the state board.
