With only mistakenly rejected absentee ballots left to tally in Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, Democrat Al Franken has a 50-vote lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. The lead, Franken's largest since Election Day, buoyed the Franken campaign. "We are absolutely thrilled with where we stand," said Marc Elias, Franken recount attorney.
The Coleman campaign was less than thrilled. "We're faced with an artificial Franken lead," said Coleman recount attorney Tony Trimble. The Coleman campaign has all but promised it will contest the election results in court because it believes more than 100 votes from Franken-friendly areas were double counted.
The 50-vote lead is provisional because there are still rejected absentee ballots to count. Those absentee ballots, which local election judges mistakenly didn't count, are the latest focus of recount controversy.
In deciding a suit brought by the Coleman campaign over the absentee ballots the state Supreme Court ordered that mistakenly rejected absentee ballots could be included in the recount -- but only if the two campaigns agree they should on a ballot-by-ballot basis.
While local officials believe there are about 1,350 wrongly rejected ballots, it's not clear how many ballots the campaigns will actually send to the state for counting. Over the weekend, the Franken campaign had said it would be willing to have all those sent to the state.