The statewide recounting of all ballots cast Nov. 4 in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election is almost done. Then why does it feel like it’s coming undone?

Day 10 of the recount wasn’t huge in raw numbers: Fewer than five percent of the votes cast Nov. 4 were recounted Wednesday. But the official figure now puts the process at 97.58 percent finished, meaning that fewer than half as many ballots as were recounted today remain for election officials to review by their end-of-the-week deadline.

The campaigns of Democrat Al Franken and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman challenged a combined total of 323 more ballots, pushing the pile of challenged ballots past the 6,000 mark even as Franken’s staff pledged to withdraw 633 of their 2,910 challenges.

Campaigns undoing challenges is one thing, and fairly inevitable given the staggering number of challenges from both sides. But election officials undoing recorded votes is another, and the sizable shifts due to lost and found ballots — most recently in Minneapolis and Maplewood — are making the whole process seem undone just as recount officials begin to button it up.

For what it’s worth, Coleman’s lead stands at 316 in the official recount stats as of the end of Wednesday. But no one relies on that number as anything other than a starting point anymore. Factor in ballots that have been frivolously challenged, wrongly rejected, or suddenly re-found and you might have a figure people would pay attention to. Franken’s staff tried to do that Wednesday as they claimed a double-digit lead if election officials’ initial rulings on individual ballot presence are felt — even as Franken decried the apparent loss of ballots in Minneapolis’ Ward 3, Precinct 1.