From MSNBC:
In a Franken camp teleconference call this afternoon, lead recount attorney Marc Elias stressed the need to find missing ballots and encouraged the Minnesota Secretary of State's office to take an active role in the process.
"Missing ballots aren’t automatically an indication of foul play, but it should be a serious matter of concern," Elias said. "We hope and call on the Secretary of State to issue clear instructions on all counties so that these ballots may be found and properly counted."
Elias provided examples in both Clay County and St. Louis County, in which the amount of ballots cast on November 4th does not match up with the amount of ballots produced for reconsideration in the recount
St. Louis County is heavily Democratic. Even George McGovern got 59% of the vote there; every other Dem pres nominee 1960-2004 has hit over 60% except Clinton in 1992, where he won 56.8% of the vote with 22.8% for George Bush '41 and 20% for Ross the Perot; Obama got 65% of the vote.
I believe the strongly Democratic character of St. Louis is more than enough to start baseless rumor-mongering.
Plus, I needed to post a diary here in order to see if I could post both here and at Congress Matters on the same day.
By the way, currently, according to the Minnesota Star-Tribune's numbers:
Coleman leads by 210 votes.
Before you start giving up hope, though, I'd like to note that the Coleman campaign has challenged 1,625 ballots and the Franken campaign has challenged 1,501, so that the margin is almost certainly much, much closer.
As there have been no other images released of challenged ballots, let's stick with the classic one:
Here's alleged Lizard People collaborator (i.e. the guy who claims to have cast the above ballot), Lucas Davenport, 25 years old, of Bemidji, MN.
You can listen to the interview here
Update: 61 "missing ballots" not counted in the original count have been found in Becker County, MN
This is not good news, as Becker County not only went for Coleman, even hapless McCain won it 52%-45%
On the plus side, it seems these ballots were from mail-in/absentee precincts, so they may be more likely to lean towards Obama, depending on how that sort of thing worked out in Minnesota (anyone know?)
Those ballots will be counted Tuesday morning, along with other ballots in their precincts. Fifty-three of the as-yet uncounted ballots came from mail-in precincts and eight were absentee ballots.