U.S. Sen. candidate Al Franken has sued Olmsted County over 27 rejected absentee ballots he argued should be counted because they were originally accepted. Election officials are awaiting a decision from Winona District Court Judge Nancy Bostrack, who took the case under advisement after listening to arguments Tuesday during a court hearing. This comes as election officials statewide are awaiting the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision in a case brought by Franken's opponent, U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. The Republican is trying to block counties from counting improperly rejected absentee ballots. An estimated 1,600 absentee ballots statewide are at stake. In Olmsted County, election officials say 50 absentee ballots were improperly rejected.
The Franken campaign contends that 27 absentee ballots in Olmsted County simply ended up in the wrong pile. "These (absentee ballots) were all marked accepted, but then placed in the reject pile. They were misplaced," said Colleen Murray, a Franken campaign spokeswoman. But Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem said the county has concluded that only 13 of those 27 ballots should not have been rejected. They are among the county's 50 improperly rejected ballots. Ostrem said the remaining 14 ballots were rejected for legitimate legal reasons.
"One of the ballots was for the primary election. It wasn't even for the general election, so it can't be counted," Ostrem said. The Olmsted County Canvassing Board had been scheduled to meet Tuesday to count the improperly rejected ballots. But that meeting was canceled after the Minnesota Supreme Court advised counties to delay counting these ballots following the Coleman campaign's petition.
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- - Now it's on to Norm Coleman's challenges. This morning the State Canvassing Board will begin examining the disputed ballots put forward by the Republican incumbent. That comes after the board spent a day and a half processing most of the challenges put forward by Democrat Al Franken.
St. Paul, Minn. - - Coleman currently leads Franken by 362 votes - but that margin is sure to change. In the meantime, the campaigns are waiting for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule on the fate of another batch of ballots. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the canvassing board has 20 hours of work left to do, and they'll stay late into the night on Friday to make sure they review all of the ballots. On day two of the State Canvassing Board's ballot review, the board removed many of the hiccups that slowed down the process the first day and started working with assembly line efficiency.
One reason for the faster pace is that members appear to have reached agreement on certain challenges. Another is that the Franken campaign started withdrawing a greater number of challenges. Many coming as the ballots were called out. However, there were still some ballots that stymied the board. Some were ballots where the voter missed the oval for any candidate. Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson said the board's chief intent is to set a standard for certain ballots and stick with it. "These are so subtle sometimes. We're trying our best," Magnuson said. "We're trying to be consistent."
The board processed a total of 418 Franken challenges through Wednesday. Coleman's campaign has double that number of challenges remaining. But the fate of 150 of those challenges could be determined quickly when the board rules on a Coleman campaign argument. Coleman attorney Tony Trimble is asking the board to consider whether local elections officials counted some ballots twice during the recount. On some occasions, elections workers have to create a duplicate ballot because the machine won't accept the original. Trimble said both the duplicate ballots and the original ballots were counted during the recount. Trimble is basing that argument on the fact that some precincts garnered more votes during the recount than on Election Night. "I mean if a precinct had, for example, 1,250 votes on Election Night and they're going to end up with 1,264, you've got 14 excess originals," Trimble said. "I think my youngest daughter could probably figure that one out."
Several members of the canvassing board didn't dispute that there may be double counting but are questioning whether it's their role to weigh in on the issue. Board member Edward Cleary, who is also a Ramsey County judge, said the Coleman campaign may be better off using the issue to contest the outcome of the election in court. "We keep coming back to the fact that there may be double counting and someday someone can air that out and make factual findings along those lines," Cleary said. "We're not that group."
If the canvassing board decides this morning that it wants to consider the issue of duplicate ballots, Franken's campaign may also bring forward several hundred more challenges. Franken's attorney, Marc Elias, said it's faulty logic to suggest double counting is the only reason there would be a greater number of votes counted during the recount than on Election night. He said other things could be in play like election machines failing to count certain votes. Elias also complained that Coleman's team is trying to change the rules after they agreed to include the original ballots before the recount started. "What you saw today in the canvassing board hearing, with this argument over allegations of duplicate ballots, is just another effort by the Coleman campaign to cast doubt on this election and to try to halt the count," Elias said.
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