The statewide canvassing board passed two motions this morning aimed at ensuring that every properly cast vote is include in the U.S. Senate recount. The five-member panel, which includes four judges and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, agreed to accept election returns from a Minneapolis precinct that includes 133 lost ballots.

The canvassing board also passed a motion recommending that county election officials sort rejected absentee ballots into five piles — four stacks of ballots rejected for valid reasons, with the fifth pile representing votes mistakenly left out of the initial tally. This directive could presumably pave the way for such votes to be included in the recount.

According to the Secretary of State’s Office, 49 counties have already sorted rejected absentee ballots in this manner and reported the results. What they discovered: 638 ballots were improperly rejected in those counties, or 13 percent of the total. Extrapolating out across all 87 counties, this means it’s likely that roughly 1,500 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected — more than enough to sway the outcome of the election.

The canvassing board’s actions were largely in line with positions advocated by Al Franken’s campaign. “We are pleased that the state canvassing board has affirmed what we always believed to be true: Minnesota is not a state that disenfranchises its voters,” said Andy Barr, communications director for the Franken campaign, in a statement released after the hearing. “Today’s decisions represent positive and productive steps towards ensuring that this election is decided fairly and accurately, as well as a complete rejection of the Coleman campaign’s effort to throw out lawful votes from Minnesotans.”

The canvassing board’s actions will likely keep the electoral contest out of the courts for now. But it remains to be seen whether counties that previously refused to sort rejected absentee ballots into five piles (most notably Ramsey and Washington) will now do so. According to Washington County elections supervisor Carol Peterson, they have not yet determined how to proceed in light of the board’s decision. “It hasn’t been re-evaluated yet,” said Peterson. “That is something that we would run past our county attorney’s office.” (Ramsey County elections manager Joe Mansky could not immediately be reached for comment.)*

Secretary of State Ritchie stated that he can’t predict whether the reluctant counties will now move forward with sorting the ballots, but said he believes they want to make sure their tally is accurate. “Most of the counties I’ve talked to are very anxious to correct errors that they find,” he said.

The canvassing board also implored both campaigns to reduce the number of challenged ballots. Roughly 6,600 ballots were initially disputed by representatives of the Coleman and Franken camps. But both sides have since rescinded more than 1,000 of those challenges, leaving roughly 4,200 ballots in dispute.

The canvassing board is slated to begin inspecting the challenged ballots on Tuesday in order to make the final determination on which candidate a voter intended to support. That process is scheduled to last just four days, but presumably could drag on much longer if the tally of challenged ballots doesn’t continue to drop significantly.

Ritchie told reporters after the canvassing board hearing that the outcome of the Senate contest remains very much up in the air. “Absolutely no one can tell or predict who will have the most votes from Minnesota voters from November 4th until this process is completed,” he said.

*UPDATE*
I just spoke with Mansky. He says that they’re going to meet with the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office on Monday to discuss how to proceed. But local election officials have already gone through the rejected absentee ballots and determined that there were 156 (including 34 in St. Paul) that were improperly left out of the initial count. So the physical process of actually sorting the ballots into the notorious five piles would not be particularly difficult if they decide to proceed.