MN-Sen: Recount finished! (Kind of)

Daily Kos Staff

Friday December 05, 2008 · 11:19 AM PST

2008/12/05 · 11:19

With the recount over, the Star Tribune gives Norm Coleman a 238-vote lead, but that doesn't include challenged ballots, which number about 5,400, pending negotiations between the campaigns to reduce the number of challenged ballots. While the official state results site hasn't been updated yet, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the official margin will be down to a 192-vote Coleman lead, which would be down slightly from the 215-vote Coleman victory after the first count. Why the discrepancies? Beats me.

The state canvassing board will meet on December 16 to review those challenged ballots. If they were to affirm the decision of local election judges on every one of those challenges, then the Franken campaign claims it would win by four votes. That number does not include the 133 missing ballots from a Minneapolis precinct that have likely cost Franken about 36 votes. A state election official has said that if the ballots aren't found, they would probably stick with the election night numbers, giving Franken a bit more of a cushion. One can't assume that every single one of those ballot challenges will fail.

But if you want more drama, here's some that will make the conspiracy theorists on the Right go nuts:

Minneapolis election officials are still searching for 133 ballots that city officials believe to be missing from one precinct.

During their search this morning in a Minneapolis warehouse, they found a thin plastic bag that contains about 10 uncounted overseas military ballots from another precinct.

Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert says it's "clear the ballots were mishandled."

The Coleman campaign is disputing that the city has any missing ballots.

Is the Coleman campaign going to really go to the mat to challenge mishandled military ballots? The problem for the Coleman campaign is that the ballots are from a heavily Franken precinct, so while they may think military ballots lean their way, if the gap is truly four votes, it's a big risk for them to let those ballots into the count without a fight.

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