absentee ballots

If only they’d used washable markers.

Norm Coleman’s campaign this morning asked the judges in Minnesota’s Senate election contest trial to stop the secretary of state’s office from marking out numbers on 933 absentee ballots that link them to the envelopes in which they arrived. But state workers have already blacked out almost all of the numbers.

UPDATE: The Secretary of State’s office now says half of the ballots remain unredacted.

The three judges who will decide whether Norm Coleman prevails in his election contest of Minnesota’s Senate recount limited their scope late today by ruling out re-examination of at least 12 out of 19 ballot categories. 
“[T]he facts presented thus far do not show a wholesale disenfranchisement of absentee voters in the 2008 general election,”  the judges [...]

Al Franken likely increased his lead over former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman to 249 votes after the three-judge panel presiding over the Minnesota Senate election contest ordered that 24 absentee ballots be counted.

Norm Coleman’s lawyers said today they might ask a three-judge panel to open every absentee ballot that was rejected in Minnesota’s contested Senate election. That would be about 12,000 ballots, or nearly 10 times the 1,350 that the state Canvassing Board examined during a recount that left Al Franken with a 225-vote lead.

Here’s a quick recap of the latest developments in Minnesota’s Senate recount:
The biggest remaining pool of disputed ballots — 1,350 that that local officials rejected on Election Day for no legal reason — remain disputed. The campaigns of Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman differ sharply on how many should be counted, and under a state Supreme Court order they’ll have their say this week at 12 regional meetings where the ballots’ fate will be decided. Coleman must make up a 46-vote deficit if he is to keep his seat.

Al Franken’s Senate campaign said today it was withdrawing some 425 more of the ballot challenges its representatives made during Minnesota’s statewide election recount. Together Franken and his opponent, Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, made 1,283 initial withdrawals last week from their combined total of 6,655 challenged ballots. Franken recount attorney Marc Elias told reporters the campaign would continue reviewing — and if need be, withdrawing — challenged ballots through Dec. 16, when the State Canvassing Board meets to begin a three-day process of tallying the recount.

The main story so far in Minnesota’s statewide election recount — besides incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s continuing slim lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken and the role of wrongly rejected absentee ballots — has been how the unexpectedly large numbers of ballot challenges from both campaigns have affected the recount’s running vote tally. By questioning election officials on 27 of every 10,000 ballots cast for either man, the campaigns have temporarily removed nearly 6,000 votes from the official recount totals, leaving Coleman in command (for the moment) of a 344-vote advantage. But take one statistic from Monday’s recount action — Coleman challenged 35 more ballots than did Franken — and extrapolate it across eight days of a recount that’s now nine-tenths done, and you can show, on paper at least, how Coleman’s ballot-challenge lead could account for his lead in the running tally of overall votes.

As the members of the Minnesota State Canvassing Board — with varying degrees of enthusiasm — fell in line Wednesday to reject Al Franken’s request that they count votes on improperly rejected absentee ballots in his U.S. Senate race with incumbent Norm Coleman, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie warned against leaving such problems for individual [...]

The Minnesota Independent liveblogged and tweeted (at MnIndyLIVE) the Nov. 26 State Canvassing Board meeting, at which Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie led the five-person board in considering the Al Franken for Senate campaign’s request that they find a way to count votes from all improperly rejected absentee ballots.

The campaign of Democrat Al Franken today trumpeted net gains during the first day of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election recount even in Republican-leaning parts of the state. “We have reason to be optimistic,” recount attorney Marc Elias told reporters at an afternoon press conference. “We are picking up votes across the state.” The candidate himself — seldom seen locally since recount gears began turning — shared that view, according to communications director Andy Barr. “Al is cautiously optimistic,” Barr said.