MN Senate race could be closest in US history

Minnesota's hard fought and highly disputed Senate race has reached a major milestone, with Democrat Al Franken leading incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman by 49 votes.

The State Canvassing Board wrapped up work Tuesday on the recount phase, adopting a final report on the statewide recount of 2.9 million ballots which incorporated the panel's own rulings on challenged ballots. That tally gave Franken 1,211,950 votes compared to 1,211,901 for Senator Coleman.

The Associated Press pointed out that margin represents roughly one vote for every 58,000 Minnesotans who went to the polls November 4th. In sheer statistical terms it's a staggering figure.

"We have been playing a long game and we are well into the fourth quarter," Franken's recount attorney Marc Elias told reporters after the meeting, "And we are a few yards from the end zone but we feel good about being able to get it in."

The Canvassing Board won't declare a winner until next Monday, but before that result can be formally certified it's likely the election will wind up in court. The Coleman campaign has raised several objections to the recount process, including ghe issue of duplicate ballots in Minneapolis.

"We're faced with an artificial Franken lead of double digits is all," Coleman's recount attorney Tony Trimble said Tuesday, "There are a hundred double-counted ballots, actually 110 double-counted ballots that will wipe out that lead and keep Coleman justifiably in front."

The Coleman campaign contends those ballots were counted twice in Hennepin County during the hand recount, because in some cases duplicates weren't marked as such and ended on the recount table along with the originals.

The Supreme Court and the Canvassing Board both refused to take action on the duplicates, saying it's an issue best left for a post election court contest.

If it does wind up in an formal legal contest, state law prescribes that Chief Justice Eric Magnuson would appoint three Ramsey County judges to hear the case.

Magnuson, an appointee of Governor Tim Pawlenty, is a member of the Canvassing Board himself. Tuesday he expressed confidence in the quality of the work that's been done thus far by the board and the Secretary of State's office.

"Everybody's worked very hard on this and if there were any nits to be picked they've been picked," he remarked.

Rejected absentees

The final tally won't be known until the campaigns work through a pool of wrongfully rejected absentee ballots, a process that began Tuesday morning in a series of regional meetings throughout the state.

In response to an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court, local election officials across Minnesota developed a list of 1,350 absentee ballots they believe were rejected by mistake and should've been opened and counted on Election Day.

Those ballots remain sealed in envelopes, so it's not known yet which campaign stands to gain the most from them. The high court authorized local officials to open those ballots and count them, but gave the campaigns the power to decide which ballots will be counted and which ones won't.

The campaigns have until Friday to reach agreement with local officials on which of the ballots were wrongfully disqualified. Only those ballots approved by all three entities -- election officials, Coleman and Franken -- will be resurrected and added to the mix.

Franken's campaign on Saturday agreed that all 1,350 ballots should be counted, but the Coleman campaign has signed off on only 778 of them. "We made an offer to accept all 13-hundred and 50 of them, because we're confident that if all those are counted we gain even more votes," Elias said.

But the Coleman campaign thought that was rushing the process, which set in motion the series of regional absentee ballot negotiating sessions. In the meantime the Coleman campaign moved to place 654 other rejected absentees into consideration, ballots that haven't been set aside by local officials as wrongfully rejected.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said, however, that it would violate the rules the two campaigns agreed to at the outset. They were supposed to submit their lists of other absentees to county officials by Monday at 3pm, which didn't happen.

"It's unimaginable to me why they can't take ten seconds per envelope in some 87 counties just to see if in fact those also were wrongfully rejected," Coleman's lawyer Trimble complained on Tuesday.

Frustration bubbling over

Trimble personally targeted Gelbmann, accusing him of being in collusion with the Franken campaign.

"Mr Gelbmann has gone to join himself at the hip with the Franken campaign," Trimble alleged, "He has communicated with the counties and told them simply focus on the 1,350 ballots."

He also took a shot at Franken's team for not agreeing to Coleman's plan for those 654 ballots, which are in rural areas and suburbs where Coleman outperformed Franken. Dakota County alone accounts for 121 of those absentees Coleman's camp wants to add to the mix.

"The Franken campaign has decided to ice up the fish house so that nobody else can get in, and we want bust that ice door down and we want to count these extra ballots or at least look at the envelopes."

In the past two days Franken's campaign has pointed out the irony of Coleman's lawyers looking to "expand the universe" of absentee ballots, after originally asking the Supreme Court to block all of them.

Franken's campaign originally pushed the notion of counting improperly rejected absentees, after finding evidence some legally registered voters had been disqualified for lack of registration. Franken went to court to force local officials to release their list of rejected absentees, which numbered 12,000 across Minnesota.

While approving the use of rejected absentees, the Supreme Court delivered a partial victory to Coleman's campaign by giving candidates the power to block individual ballots. That prompted a harsh dissent from Justice Alan Page, who called in "a perverse result" to allow candidates to decide which ballots were properly rejected by election officials.

Franken's attorneys still expressed confidence in the system as of Tuesday morning.

"We've said all along we're going to take this one step at a time and we believe that this process will work," Elias explained, "And we believe that when they meet on the 5th they will be able to certify a winner and we believe strongly it will be Al Franken." Coleman's lawyers haven't revealed yet whether they plan to ask the Supreme Court for more time, to give county officials more time to consider Coleman's extra pool of 654 ballots.

That controversy derailed the negotiations over the rejected absentees in Anoka County Tuesday morning, and delayed the process in Saint Louis County.

Other areas around the state reported mixed results, ranging from total gridlock to swift action on the absentees.

According to the Associated Press Coleman's campaign challenged dozens of wrongfully rejected absentee ballots in Saint Louis County. But in other counties virtually every ballot made the cut, and will be opened.

The state's too most populous counties, Ramsey and Hennepin, will begin their absentee ballot bargaining sessions on Wednesday.

By John Croman, KARE 11 News

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