The Al Franken for Senate campaign is asking Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to instruct all counties to redouble their efforts to find missing ballots.

“There are votes in Minnesota that aren’t even being accounted for, much less being counted,” spokesman Andy Barr told reporters at a press conference at Franken headquarters in St. Paul this afternoon.

Franken’s recount attorney, Marc Elias, said the campaign had become aware of the problem in the last few days from reports in the press as well as from campaign workers in the field. “Ballots have gone missing,” Elias said, calling it “a serious matter [that is] very concerning.”

He named more than a half dozen instances — from St. Paul to Duluth, and Crystal to Apple Valley — where the recount has turned up discrepancies between the number of recorded votes and the number of ballots county officials have been able to produce. And besides the cases reported in the news media, Elias said, the campaign’s own information indicates “this problem may be even more widespread.”

Elias acknowledged that “sometimes ballots go missing and then they get found” and that “missing ballots are not automatically an indicator that there is cause for concern.”

“In an election this close we cannot let any lawful vote go uncounted, and neither can we allow ballots to simply go lost,” Elias said.

Elias said the campaign’s letter to Ritchie would ask him to “launch an investigation to identify any and all missing ballots, and to immediately instruct local elected officials to redouble their efforts to find all missing ballots.”

As for the recount itself, Elias said the Franken campaign’s internal numbers, based on the judgment of the recount officials rather than challengers from either campaign, indicate that “the margin remains in double digits. In fact, it has narrowed since Friday.” He said that included ballots recounted on Saturday but not today. Official figures as of Saturday night had Coleman ahead by 167 votes with two-thirds of ballots recounted.

“When will Franken be ahead?” a reporter asked. “When it’s over,” Elias answered. He said the ballots already recounted remain “a slightly redder pile,” a subset that’s more Coleman-friendly than either the ballots remaining to be counted or the total ballots cast Nov. 4 taken as a whole.

Barr and Elias said nothing about events in Mower County today, where The UpTake has taken reports of recount officials and Franken challengers in conflict. The latest word is that tensions have calmed, apparently following a call from Ritchie.

Elias acknowledged the growing number of challenged ballots in the recount but said that in the end, the State Canvassing Board determines which candidates gets the votes from challenged ballots. “And there is nothing that either campaign can do about that by issuing challenges.”

Note: The Minnesota Independent hopes to cover Sen. Norm Coleman’s press conferences as we have Al Franken’s; however, Coleman’s campaign staff has refused entry to and in one instance ejected our reporters.

Video via The UpTake