regional meeting

Two of the first in a series of a dozen regional meetings that started today in Minnesota’s Senate election recount adjourned this morning after only an hour — with very different results. In Sherburne County, representatives of candidates Al Franken and Sen. Norm Coleman agreed to forward to the State Canvassing Board 15 of 18 unopened absentee ballots that local election officials decided last week had been wrongly rejected. But next door in Anoka County the process prescribed by order of the state Supreme Court quickly collapsed, with the rival campaigns at loggerheads over the Coleman representative’s insistence on including ballots that local officials had not selected as having been wrongly rejected.