Al Franken gets boosts in Minn. Senate recount
By BRIAN BAKST – 1 hour ago

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Democrat Al Franken got good news Friday in his bid for the Senate, winning favorable rulings from a state elections board on rejected absentee ballots and the tally in one of his strongholds.

The Canvassing Board overseeing the race recount recommended that county election boards sort and count wrongly rejected absentee ballots. The five-member panel also urged that a recount in one University of Minnesota area precinct be based on Election Night tapes from a ballot counting machine.

The recount there, where results favor Franken, ended with 133 missing ballots that could be counted if the tapes are used.

While the state board's recommendations are nonbinding, most counties have gone forward with a voluntary sorting. Others, however, have balked in the drawn-out recount as Franken tries to topple Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

"It was a great day for democracy," Franken attorney Marc Elias said of the state board's recommendations.

At least 638 absentee ballots are known to have been rejected for something other than the four legal reasons for disqualification. That's based on an assessment of about half of Minnesota's counties by the secretary of state's office. State officials estimate the total could top 1,500.

It's not known which candidate stands to benefit most from those ballots.

"It would be unjust and disrespectful to those voters not to count those votes," said Judge Edward Cleary, one of four who sit with Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie on the state board.

The board acted after receiving a legal opinion from the office of Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, a Democrat, that the missing absentee ballots should be counted.

On the missing Minneapolis ballots, the board voted unanimously to rely on the ballot machine tapes rather than the results from the manual recount in the one precinct. Coleman's campaign had argued against using anything but the recount figures.

A packet of ballots from the precinct couldn't be found after an exhaustive search of the city's election warehouse. Consequently, the recount showed 133 fewer votes than the number of people who signed in on Election Day or who voted absentee.

Because Franken decisively won the precinct, he stood to lose the most votes if the board went with the recount tally over the machine tapes.

With all precincts recounted, Coleman holds a 192-vote edge over Franken. Going into the recount, Coleman was up by 215 votes.

That margin doesn't include any of the 6,655 ballot challenges the two campaigns lodged during the recount. The two campaigns have pulled back hundreds of those challenges, leaving the Canvassing Board to consider some 4,200 starting Tuesday.

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