The vote gains made by Al Franken when 171 missing ballots were found in Maplewood yesterday were erased today when 133 ballots “somehow ended up being fed through a voting machine twice on election day,” the Star Tribune reports. Minneapolis Elections Director Cindy Reichert says she believes all ballots are now accounted for and blames “human error” for the double counting, which resulted in a net loss of 36 votes for Franken. Franken’s campaign responded to the news with a letter to Reichert and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie urging Reichert to do a complete search before the recount closes on Friday or tallies are officially reported from that precinct.

In a release, Franken communications director Andy Barr called it “an incredible breach of the democratic process.”

2,029 voters had their votes recorded on Election Day, and now local officials are able to produce only 1,896 ballots. That makes 133 residents of this one precinct in Minneapolis whose voices were just effectively silenced by this serious error, and it must be corrected before anyone can consider this recount complete or accurate.

Earlier today, Franken’s lawyer claimed the Democrat had a 22-vote lead; Sen. Norm Coleman’s team responded, facetiously, claiming that they, in turn, lead by the randomly assigned margin of 2,200 votes.