withdrawals

Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount has ratcheted up since Election Day to become an inscrutable form of inside baseball. But Tuesday’s proceedings of the State Canvassing Board made even baseball seem easy. Pitchers adjust their pitches based on the umpires’ first few calls, while the first day’s decisions on challenged ballots went by before campaigns began to adjust to the board’s way of ruling. Now both sides are mixing up their pitches like baseball aces, adding and subtracting from their challenged-ballot piles.

It can’t be coincidence that the Al Franken for Senate campaign pledged today to reduce its pending ballot challenges in the ongoing statewide Senate recount to fewer than 500 by Tuesday. On Friday, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie estimated that the State Canvassing Board could only evaluate 1,000 such ballots in the four days it [...]