“Heads Al Franken wins, tails Norm Coleman loses.” That’s the perspective of the Minnesota Senate recount Rep. Michele Bachmann shared on Fox & Friends this morning. She says “the law was not applied fairly. Norm Coleman, his legal team will be proved right. Once the law is applied fairly. If we get a fair judge, Norm Coleman will win this election.”

The WSJ writes, “Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.”

The WSJ omits the makeup of the “meek” Canvassing Board. Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, a close associate of Gov. Tim Pawlenty , was appointed by the governor in 2008. Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson also was appointed by Pawlenty, Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin won a nonpartisan election and is thought to be a Democrat, and Ramsey County Judge Edward J. Clear was appointed by Independence Party Gov. Jesse Ventura. Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie fills the fifth seat on the board. The “meek” board has made mostly unanimous decisions, and the multipartisan makeup reflects the electorate.

The WSJ’s opinion of Minnesota recount process has, within hours, become referred to as “reporting” by conservative commentators who allege the election has been stolen. One such commentator is MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.

The Star Tribune editorial board, which was as enthusiastic about Coleman as the WSJ during campaign season, praised the recount process, writing “The five-member board’s orderly, transparent and efficient dispatch of 6,655 challenged ballots has served this state well.” And Kevin Duchschere of the Strib’s Big Question blog says, “Having watched the board work for a few weeks, I doubt that Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and other members of the board would agree with [the WSJ's] characterization.”

Also disagreeing with the WSJ’s characterization? Just about everybody involved in the recount. Much of the complaint stems from issues that the Canvassing Board has no authority over, including alleged doubly counted votes. It’s a matter for the courts. That’s why state law allows seven days for a candidate to contest the election through the courts between the time the vote is certified (as it was Monday for Franken) and the election certificate is awarded.

At 2:30 p.m. CST today, Minnesota’s State Canvassing Board will meet to review the results of the statewide recount and, if all goes as expected, certify that Al Franken got more votes than Sen. Norm Coleman (Franken unofficially leads by 225 votes). The state Supreme Court refused to address a Coleman campaign motion that sought to block certification of the vote. Watch the proceedings here or follow our live Tweets.

(Photo by Aaron Landry/Flickr)

Democrat Al Franken will not lose the lead he gained Friday in the Minnesota Senate recount, his campaign’s recount attorney said today. Franken’s margin over Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, now in the low three-digits in many media estimates, will stand between 35 and 50 votes next Tuesday, attorney Marc Elias told reporters during a rare weekend press conference. By then the State Canvassing Board expects to have added back thousands of withdrawn ballot challenges to its tally of votes in the Nov. 4 election that were so far not included in official running recount totals.

The pronouncement that Franken will soon be Minnesota’s senator-elect is not just the campaign talking; it’s the campaign’s math talking. Franken’s figures always “assumed those [challenged] ballots would end up in the tally of the candidate for whom each one was originally called,” as a campaign statement put it. “[T]he internal count can predict the result of that work with certainty: a 35-50 vote lead for Franken.”

In a tone that sounded simultaneously tired, sober and certain, Elias said he is confident that Franken’s lead will also withstand the statewide canvass of wrongly rejected absentee votes that the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered counties to conduct by Dec. 31. Indeed, that tabulation of as many as 1,600 uncounted but properly cast votes is widely expected to favor Franken.

Elias dismissed Coleman campaign motions filed Friday that ask the state Supreme Court to order the canvassing board not to count or certify a recount that contains duplicate ballots which Coleman alleges may have been counted twice. Elias said Coleman’s concern about duplicate ballots represented a reversal from its earlier position, a departure from an agreement the campaigns had on how to deal with duplicates, an effort to prolong and cast doubt on the recount process, and a sign of panic from a campaign that now sees it will lose. Local elections officials create duplicate ballots when voters’ original ballots that get too damaged or soiled to be read by vote-counting machines.

Download the FSM ballot here (pdf).

Ritchie: Most counties are very anxious to proceed. A huge number of absentee ballots were wrongly rejected. I was first predicting 9 or 10 percent. It’s closer to 13 percent. Counties want to find ways to fix the system so we have fewer errors. No one expects that absentee ballots will go down in number in the future.

Q: (About the goals of today’s meeting)

Ritchie: Accuracy and transparency are our top priorities. But with respect for the judges’ time who are on the board. On top of the democratic principle that all votes are counted. It was sobering to find that the number of wrongly rejected absentee ballots was between 1,000 and 2,000.

Q. How confident are you that the maximum number of wrongly rejected ballots will come before you?

Ritchie: Our biggest job is the 4,000-some challenged ballots. Getting through those so we get to the challenges that have merit.

Q. Are campaigns playing games?

Ritchie: The campaigns have been moving in a positive direction, just not as fast as needed. If a serious challenge takes 2-3 minutes, in four days we could look at 1,000 ballots. The judges and justices said the challenges that merit our time are not in the 4,000 range and probably are below 1,000. This is for the campaigns to hear and take seriously. There are reports that the Franken campaign is going to withdraw more today and that would be great.

Q. What is the drop dead deadline? Friday afternoon?

Ritchie: When we sign the certificate. The local officials want to make the corrections, the obvious errors.

Q. What kind of correspondence to counties that haven’t responded?

Ritchie: Same to all.

Q. Clarify motion from meeting

Ritchie: Authorize them to open their reports and correct errors.

Q. How will amended totals work into the recounting?

Ritchie: They’d have to give us the full information about changes made. We will cross that bridge when we get there, when the canvassing board receives an amended report. Then we’ll create a procedure to incorporate the corrections.

[...]

Q. How exactly work in amended reports?

Ritchie: Don’t know yet. Colleagues on board had a strong reluctance to say now how we will do this. … I’ve heard people say voters should just go to courts. I’m trying to make sure only what goes to court is what needs to go to court.

Q. How confident are you that Minnesota will know its next senator by dusk on Dec. 19th?

Ritchie: My goal is to say how Minnesotans voted and the end of the day on the 19th is reasonable. There may be loose ends, and we won’t work on religious holidays. It’s a matter of justice that when we’ve signed certificate that we’ve done the best we can.

Q. Comfort level about judging challenged ballots?

Ritchie: In the 1962 recount, trying to get a pattern established about dealing with challenges, for instance how do you deal with ballots in which Mickey Mouse is written in? We could decide on that and then move a group of ballots together.

[...]

Q. Are you uncomfortable that the board sided with Franken on both the rejected absentee ballots and the missing ballots in Minneapolis?

Ritchie: It was important the the canvassing board moves together in consensus. I’m not happy with how some of these issues have been presented in a partisan way. We had top jurists in the state. The work was careful. We moved on a consensus basis.