Al Franken’s campaign claims it now holds a 22-vote lead in the U.S. Senate race with 138,000 votes left to be recounted. This figure contrasts with other tabulations, based on numbers from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office, that shows Coleman maintaining a 303-vote lead.
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.
Tomorrow morning the state canvassing board will decide the fate of absentee ballots that were rejected by local election officials. Al Franken’s campaign believes that information about those ballots should be scrutinized to determine if they were properly invalidated. Norm Coleman’s campaign has argued that inspecting such ballots is outside the purview of the statewide recount currently underway. Whatever the outcome of the canvassing board hearing tomorrow, it seems likely that the fate of the rejected absentee ballots will ultimately be settled in court.
The Al Franken for Senate campaign is asking Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to instruct all counties to redouble their efforts to find missing ballots. “There are votes in Minnesota that aren’t even being accounted for, much less being counted,” spokesman Andy Barr told reporters at a press conference at Franken headquarters in St. Paul this afternoon.
Video and more after the jump.
Al Franken’s campaign believes it’s spotted a pattern in their opponent’s ballot challenges. “And that pattern is that if you vote for John McCain, it is inconceivable — inconceivable — that you didn’t also intend to vote for Norm Coleman,” said Marc Elias, the Franken team’s lead recount attorney, wielding a stack of 10 challenged ballots at a press conference today. “I tihnk it’s clear now, at least in some instances, there are challenges being lodged that are clearly frivolous.”
Continued, with video, after the jump.
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.
At a Wednesday press conference, Al Franken for Senate attorney Marc Elias cheered today’s Ramsey County District Court ruling that the county must provide the campaign with information about whose absentees ballots were rejected in the election earlier this…
Al Franken’s lawyers take a lashing from Politics in Minnesota (PIM) — mostly on style points — for their impolitic memorandum in response to an opinion from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office that the State…
We won. We won. We won. If Norm Coleman’s campaign repeats this mantra often enough, perhaps it will actually come true. At least that seems to be the reasoning of the Senator’s political camp. “We think we’re three for three right now,” Fritz Knaak, the lead attorney for the Republican, told reporters just moments after a statewide canvassing board officially initiated a recount in the closest U.S. Senate race in Minnesota history. “He’s got more votes than the other side. That’s how it works in our system.”
The Al Franken for Senate campaign announced today it is suing Ramsey County in hopes that a favorable court ruling will compel all Minnesota counties to release the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected in last week’s election. Attorney Marc Elias said the campaign may present cases of wrongly rejected absentee ballots to the newly-formed canvassing board that will oversee the recount in the U.S. Senate race between Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.
Video and more after the jump.
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