ballot challenges

Forget the comparisons to Florida. Think the Great Pyramids instead.
Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount is so refined, so elegant, so perfect that even its greatest excess — the unbridled, tit-for-tat ballot-challenges by both the Al Franken and Norm Coleman campaigns — has been raised to an art form. Monday’s recount action may have been replete with the apparent [...]

Even with limited activity Saturday in Minnesota’s statewide U.S. Senate recount, Al Franken and Norm Coleman managed to challenge another 368 ballots. The stack that the State Canvassing Board will have to review is now 1,893 ballots high, after two-thirds of the ballots that were cast Nov. 4 have been recounted. Unless the candidates’ campaigns change course, the challenges are on pace to reach nearly 3,000 ballots by the time the recount ends.

Simple math tells us that if the Al Franken forces and the Norm Coleman camp keep ramping up the ballot challenges, they’ll reach a combined total of 1,732 challenged ballots by the end of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount. That’s if each campaign continues to increase its number of challenges in the neighborhood of 140 per [...]