In a prior post, I wrote about the absentee ballot issue in Minnesota, but of course that’s just one of several unresolved areas in the Minnesota Senate race.

Last Friday, Al Franken received a boost when Minnesota’s Canvassing Board ruled that Election Day totals should be used for a precinct in Minneapolis in which 133 ballots that were originally included were not found during the recount process. All along, the Coleman campaign, has maintained that there were, in fact, no actual “missing ballots” in the first place.

Earlier today, Coleman’s senior counsel Fritz Knaak issued the following statement:

The concept of ‘one ballot, one vote’ is an inviolate right that must be upheld to protect the sanctity and integrity of Minnesota’s elections. No one’s vote should count more than anyone else’s,” said Knaak. “Unfortunately, through no fault of the voter, we believe there are a significant number of these situations in which the original ballot and the duplicate ballot are both being counted — in other words, one voter gets two votes. That devalues the vote of everyone else. The Franken campaign wants to simply accept the double counts; however, once those ballots are put in the pile, as the Franken campaign wants, they are part of the count. To protect the right of every voter in Minnesota, we are asking the Supreme Court to straighten out the problem of including both duplicate ballots and original ballots in the final recount number.”

It’s difficult to see how they could go about proving that there were a duplicate counts, but this does raise an interesting question. If they just revert back to the election night total whenever fewer ballots turn up than expected, what’s the point of doing a recount?

Meanwhile, TPM reports on growing optimism from Team Franken.