SFC: Sir, you are incorrect. There were two types of recounted ballots that come into play - the ones that were cast in the booth on election day, and the ones that were mailed in. The two groups are treated differently.

On ballots cast at the voting booth, there are two issues. The review of the ballots reviewed in the hand recount that were challenged by one of the two campaigns -- some of those were counted on election day (and the challenger was trying to have them DQ'd), and others were not counted on election day (and the challenger was trying to get them counted). It is a fact that Coleman made many more frivilous challenges to those ballots, which temporarily took votes away from Franken and showed him seemingly further behind, but when those challenges were dropped, or the State Canvassing Board decided in Franken's favor on many of those Coleman challenges, Franken's caught up to Coleman. On those ballots, and the ballots that were not counted at all on election day (but included reasonable indicia of voter intent), so that the local or state Canvassing Boards ultimately accepted them, there really is no litigable dispute (the court won't substitute its judgment for the decision of an administrative body charged with the responsibility, where every decision was made by a 5-0 vote) except for the matter of the duplicate ballots.

On that issue, it has been common custom in all states with optical scanning machines for local election officials to create a duplicate ballot when a voter's ballot will not be read by the machine (for whatever reason). and those duplicate ballots are marked as such. With no evidence at all that there are any duplicate ballots favoring Franken that are proven to have been counted more than once -- remember, SFC, that accusation and evidence are NOT the same thing -- and with nothing other than some very slight discrepancies between votes cast and votes counted in a handful of precints (amounting to a 10 - 15 vote discrepancy in the entire State from what I have read) which have been grossly exaggerated by Coleman and the right wing radio media, and which do NOT involve more votes being counted than were cast in any precinct in Minnesota, Coleman asserts that the election should be overturned or redone. Unless some evidence emerges in the nex 2-3 weeks (and absolutely nothing has surfaced yet despite having over two months to put his "case" together, if you don't count hyperbole and wingnut fantasy), there is no court in America that will substitite its judgment for the Canvassing Board on this issue (which, as already noted, was bipartisan, yet voted unanimously on every issue it considered).

Then there were the two groups of uncounted absentee ballots -- the ones Coleman fought very hard to exclude from being counted before he fell behind. One group was ballots which the local Canvassing Boards all agreed must be excluded because they failed to satisfy some overt requirement for an Absentee Ballot to be valid (lacking signatures, etc.) -- where a third statewide review of the same 10,000+ rejected ballots has changed two or three such ballots throughout the entire state from being "DQ'd correctly on election day" to "DQ'd incorrectly on Election Day" (and it's not clear yet if those ballots were cast for Coleman because they have not been opened yet, although they were from counties where Norm did well). That leaves 222 votes to go, assuming there were 3 and they were all cast for Coleman. Coleman now claims that 600 or more such ballots should be counted -- all 600 having been rejected by local Canvassing Boards after three reviews, all 600 having been ballots that Coleman fought to exclude from the count before he lost the recount, and all 600 ballots coming from precincts where Coleman did well on election day (and which the Coleman camp may already have determined are likely to be Republican voters, because the names are known, and there is known registration info, etc., available to the campaigns which they have ressearched) -- while at the same time asserting that it is OK not to count over 10,000 similarly rejected absentee ballots (the majority of which come from areas where Franken was much stronger than Coleman on Election Day) would be excluded. Norm's pitch is a blatant violation of equal protection, and the court has already made it clear that, in the unlikely (at least in my view) event that it were to rule that a special master appointed by the Court should independently review the 600 absentee ballots that Coleman has asked be counted, it will also rule that the special master must also review all of the other absentee ballots that were excluded on a similar basis, and not just the ones Coleman cherrypicked (which would favor Franken, who won almost 60% of all absentee votes counted state wide . . . and because a disproportionate amount of the absentee ballots that were rejected came from counties where Franken kicked Coleman's ass). Of course, in public and in the media, Coleman is advocating, alternatively, counting all absentee ballots, regardless of why they were rejected (so much for the "rule of law"), or having a do-over special election because too many ballots are in dispute (gee, I wonder why?) and the final tally was too close to let it stand without a do-over. Brilliant. I'm sure he would feel the same way if he had been ahead by 225 votes at the end of a full blown recount].

That leaves one last group of disputed ballots - the absentee ballots that the Canvassing Boards determined had been improperly or erroneously rejected, but which one of the two campaigns would not agree to count when the issue came up in the recount. This is the area of greatest unfairness, but the problem for Coleman is that it hurt Franken a lot more than it hurt Coleman, because Coleman was more aggressive in saying no to absentee ballots in strong Franken precincts than Franken was the other way around (and because absentee voters as a whole tended to favor Franken by a 10-20% margin). Of course, it was Coleman's legal challenge that led the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule that ballots which the Canvassing Boards acknowledged were erroneously rejected would be counted only if both campaign's agreed to it (subject, as always under Minnesota law, to the right of an individual voter to challenge in Court (after the recount is completed and certified) the exclusion of his or her absentee ballot if it was erroneously rejected -- and, in fact, 65 Franken supporters have filed just such a suit, which is a winner, which will increase Franken's lead to 280, and which likely result in sanctions against Coleman for frivilously challenging the inclusion of their ballots. And Coleman rejected a boatload of those kinds of ballots in Franken's strongholds. Also, what happened in the recount, whether it is fair or not to either candidate, was consistent with the original ruling of Minnesota Supreme Court -- in other words, the Canvassing Board and the campaigns followed and implemented the Minnesota Supreme Court decision (and the outcome from doing that, to Coleman's chagrin, was to Extend Franken's lead from 45 votes to 225 votes (from those 900 absentee ballots that both campaigns agreed were erroneously rejected and should have been counted). There is no chance on earth that a procedure which was conducted in strict accordance with a freshly written Minnesota Supreme Court decision (and in which the Coleman camp affirmatively accepted some, and affirmatively rejected other, such ballots) will be reversed by that same Court.

In sum, Coleman's case lacks any supporting evidence, represents a 180 degree reversal of the various legal positions he took at every important point after election day (until he fell behind, that is), and it is, plain and simple, a loser, a stall, a prayer that he can muck things up enough to get the court to throw up its hands in digust, and order a do-over. It is an insult to the Minnesotans who devoted time and energy to participating in a very thorough and transparent -- as in, a digital photo of every challenged ballot was made publicly available in the Minnesota media -- process. So my advice, Sarge, is to get use to the words "Senator Franken."