Those edits — which may seem slightly suspect but don’t egregiously defang Cleary’s missive — are more defensible than the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ failure to apply a red pencil to the laughably flawed WSJ column, which ran in full and intact on the PiPress’ own editorial page yesterday.

Joining Cleary’s complaint in today’s WSJ is another Minnesotan’s letter pointing out that the 470-vote swing certified in the recount results amounts to less than two-tenths of one percent of the votes cast:

I challenge you to find any state in this nation that could perform a recount with this kind of statistical result. I think you protest too much, and in the process insult the great state of Minnesota.

Cleary, assistant chief judge at Ramsey County District Court, identifies himself as a WSJ subscriber of three decades’ standing who doesn’t always agree with the newspaper’s editorials but was particularly disappointed by this one, which he finds “long on partisan tone and short on accurate reporting.”

Read Cleary’s complete letter after the jump.

Dear Sirs:

As a subscriber of your newspaper for almost three decades, I don’t expect to always agree with your editorial viewpoint. Yet I am nevertheless very disappointed when I read an editorial long on partisan tone and short on accurate reporting.

As a member of the Minnesota State Canvassing Board, appointed pursuant to statute, I have attended all nine Board open meetings held the past seven weeks. I am knowledgeable about the proceedings as well as Minnesota’s election laws. Our members (two Supreme Court Justices, two District Court Judges, and Secretary of State Ritchie) came from all political backgrounds, openly expressed our opinions at the meetings, and can hardly be accurately described as “meek,” unless you mean “meek” by New York in-your-face standards. Your groundless attack on Secretary Ritchie reflects poorly on the author; Ritchie worked assiduously at avoiding partisanship in these proceedings.

As to the Board as a whole, all of our major votes were unanimous. We consistently followed the law in limiting our involvement to a non-adjudicative role, declining both candidate’s attempts to expand our mandate. Further, we painstakingly reviewed each challenged ballot, some more than once, to confirm that we were ruling in a consistent manner. One can only assume, based on the tone of the editorial, the numerous inaccuracies, and the over-the-top slam at Al Franken (“tainted and undeserving”?) that had Norm Coleman come out on top in this recount, the members of the Board would have been praised as “strong-willed, intelligent, and perceptive.” We won’t hold our breath waiting for that editorial to appear.

Edward J. Cleary

Assistant Chief Judge

Second Judicial District

Minnesota State Canvassing Board

Pitchers can adjust their pitches based on the umpires’ first few calls. The campaigns of Democrat Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman sat through about 160 of the board’s rulings Tuesday before signaling that they’d be adjusting their piles of challenged ballots accordingly.

“I sure hope that if you’re adding them, you’re also subtracting them,” said Ramsey County District Judge Edward Cleary.

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s attorney, Tony Trimble, told reporters after the Tuesday meeting, which kicked off four days of meetings by the board, that the campaign would return “200-some” to its ballot-challenge pile, but also would remove some others. “We’ve restored challenges … simply because the board has now indicated how they rule on several different types of marking,” Trimble said. “And with that, of course, we have to adjust.”

On Wednesday morning, the Canvassing Board’s proceedings took the air of a baseball game in which both sides were settling in. Democrat Al Franken’s 80 additional withdrawals were much in evidence as the board sped through ballots the campaign had challenged in Minneapolis, including many dispatched within seconds of a cry of “withdrawn” from the Franken bench.

“Thank you. It’s wonderful to get withdrawals,” Ritchie remarked Wednesday morning after Franken forces withdrew another ballot as it came up before the board.

It wasn’t clear how late additions and subtractions affected the combined number of challenged ballots the board must work through this week. “We’re still south of 1,000,” Trimble promised, in the geographic-numerical nomenclature the Coleman camp has adopted, despite subtle suggestions of the American South — Florida, to be specific.

The final step in the statewide manual recount of the U.S. Senate race is underway. Shortly after noon, the five-member canvassing board began examining the roughly 1,500 ballots that have been challenged by the campaigns of Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

The process started orderly enough, with the board unanimously rejecting the first of 441 contested ballots put forth by the Franken campaign. Chief Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin then offered a sentiment likely shared by her fellow canvassing board members. “Can I just say it felt real good to get started on this?” she observed.

By the end of the first hour, when the panel took a break, Coleman had picked up 17 votes while Franken had gained 4. Those numbers are not likely reflective of any trend, however, since all of the challenges considered were from the Democrat’s campaign, meaning they are more likely to accrue in the Republican’s favor.

There were signs that the process will not be without turbulence. An early ballot (pictured) considered by the canvassing board displayed a mark in between the spaces allocated for Coleman and Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley. Local election officials had initially determined that it was a vote for Coleman. The panel, however, split on their appraisal of the voter’s intent, ultimately ruling that it should count for neither candidate — a loss for the Republican.

Before the canvassing board began inspecting the contested ballots, attorneys for each campaign were given five minutes to address the panel. Tony Trimble, representing the Coleman side, expressed concern that in some cases both original and duplicate ballots may have been included in the recount, meaning that the vote would have been tallied twice. “We now face a situation of double votes,” Trimble said. “This has occurred in at least 137 precincts that we are aware of.”

Marc Elias (pictured), representing the Franken campaign, pooh-poohed the possibility that some votes have been double counted. Instead he suggested that the Republicans are now trying to change the rules of the recount. “Those were the rules that we were given, and neither party objected to those rules that we were given,” he said. “It seems to me that today … is a bit late in the process for us to now say these rules which the Secretary of State set forth need to now be the subject of a intensive audited review.”

The canvassing board didn’t immediately act on the issue of purportedly double-counted ballots, punting that discussion to a later time. They then began the painstaking process of examining the contested ballots. The panel is expected to continue this process through at least 5 p.m. today and hopes to conclude it by Friday.

“We do not have the authority to review rejected absentee ballots,” said board member Kathleen Gearin, a Ramsey County District Court judge. “That’s the bottom line.”

Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson noted that the panel’s mandate only extends to recounting votes that have already been cast. “Rejected ballots are not cast ballots,” he said.

But the ruling doesn’t necessarily mean that improperly rejected absentee ballots will not be included in the recount. Under state law, such ballots can only be disallowed for one of four reasons. The canvassing board was uncertain what directive — if any — to provide local election officials for dealing with ballots that have been rejected for reasons that don’t fit any of those criteria.

The discussion was prompted, in part, by a letter from Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman seeking guidance in reviewing whether absentee ballots were improperly rejected. “I have very little doubt that in reviewing the rejected absentee ballots cities and counties will find a limited number of unintentional errors,” Freeman wrote.

He went on to suggest a system whereby local election officials would sort rejected ballots into five piles, indicating either the reason that they were disallowed or that no basis could be determined for the ballot being thrown out. “In this way, cities and counties would, at least, be afforded the opportunity to identify and seek to correct erroneous determinations that a ballot should be rejected,” Freeman wrote.

The canvassing board didn’t rule on the issue this morning, but rather asked for advice on the matter from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. The panel will then reconvene at a date yet to be determined (but presumably next week) to again consider the topic.

In the meantime, it’s possible that the issue of rejected absentee ballots will be taken up in the courts. The Franken campaign currently has a case pending in Ramsey County District Court related to the issue, and last week a voter whose absentee ballot was rejected filed a lawsuit in Hennepin County District Court.

Two of the canvassing board members — Gearin and fellow Ramsey County Judge Edward Cleary — were adamant that all properly cast absentee votes should be counted. “It’s important that we convey the message that we take their right to vote as serious as anyone else’s,” Cleary said.

Their views were contrasted slightly by the statements of Minnesota Supreme Court Justices G. Barry Anderson and Magnuson, both of whom were appointed by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. The duo seemed more concerned with maintaining an orderly and speedy process than in making certain that all properly cast ballots are included in the recount. “At some point in time in the process you’ve got to stop counting,” Magnuson said.