All the precincts in Minnesota have finished their recounting,
and as of now the Star Tribune
numbers have Norm Coleman ahead by 238 votes, up from the 215
vote lead he had going into the recount. There are several
wrinkles left, however. One is the outstanding issue of 133
ballots reportedly missing in a Democratic leaning precinct that
the Franken campaign argues would mean a net gain for them of
as many as 46 votes. The second issue is the more than 6,000
ballots being challenged by the campaigns. The campaigns have
begun to pare down that number and the Coleman campaign has
proposed that the two sides sit down to further reduce the number
of challenges. It's hard to predict how the challenged ballots
will affect the outcome of the race, because different types of
challenges will affect the vote margin in different ways. Based
on the ballots I've seen, most of the challenges appear to be
frivolous ones that will likely be thrown out by the state
Canvassing Board. As of this writing, Coleman has challenged more
ballots than Franken, and given that challenges currently count
as "no votes," odds are that Coleman's lead will be reduced once
the Board makes the final ruling on the ballots. But even if you
factor in the so-called 133 "mystery" ballots, and assume Franken
makes some gains once the challenges are all in, the math still
seems difficult for Franken. That's why, in the end, the race may
hinge on how far Franken is willing to go to fight over rejected
absentee ballots -- of the thousands of such rejected ballots,
the Franken campaign argues that up to 1,000 should be
ligitimately counted. He has the option of taking the matter to
the courts, and -- if that fails -- proceding to the U.S. Senate,
where Democrats may or may not want to take on a bitter partisan
floor fight. So, in other words, sit tight. Things are looking
positive for Coleman right now, but there are several of bumps
along the road in the next few weeks. For what it's worth, a
poll shows that 67 percent of Minnesotans expect Coleman to
win the recount.
UPDATE: The Franken campaign is claiming they're up by four
votes,
according to TPM. That's based on assumptions about how the
Canvassing Board will rule on the challenges, and also
anticipates a 46-vote gain from the 133 "mystery" ballots.
