Democrat Al Franken may have “won” in a pair of decisions Friday by the Minnesota State Canvassing Board, which unanimously agreed to count 133 lost ballots in Minneapolis and to ask counties statewide to look for wrongly rejected absentee ballots — or, as Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson calls them, allegedly wrongly rejected absentee ballots.

But Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman won in a pair of banner front-page headlines in the Star Tribune over the weekend. On Saturday came the cryptic message in all caps: “133+5÷87=1 BIG MUDDLE.” On Sunday the first of a three-part series on the state of Minnesota’s current electoral system ran under the ominous heading, “CAST INTO DOUBT.” The message of muddle and doubt comes straight from Coleman campaign’s statements, especially the one issued after the canvassing board’s rulings. 

A “muddle” means a “confused mess,” according to Merriam Webster — and confusion is the word of the weekend at Coleman Central, cropping up five times in its Friday communique: “Florida-Style Confusion,” “confusing actions,” “confusing to us,” “confusing, and overly expansive directives” and “direction given today remains confusing.”

As for “doubt,’ its source is similar. The only place it appears in the Strib’s Sunday story is this passage:

The candidates haven’t helped the process, most observers agree. ”From the first day when Coleman announced victory, it started throwing doubt on the process,” said [Charles] Seife, the NYU prof.

The confusing and doubtful series of numbers (”133+5÷87″) in Saturday’s headline is meaningless except as a symbol for a purportedly impenetrable and suspect recount process. The first figure (133) is the number of lost votes (now to be counted) in Minneapolis’ Precinct 1, Ward 3. The second figure (5) is apparently the number of State Canvassing Board members. The third figure (87) is the number of counties in Minnesota. The confusion the Strib math creates is most reminiscent of the arithmetic required to reconcile the nightly discrepancy during the recount between the state’s official figures, issued at 8 p.m., and the Strib’s later numbers, which consistently included slightly more ballots.