MN Senate Recount : Coleman lead is 192 with 100% recounted (updated)

[Wretched Excess]

it's going to be at least more difficult to steal the election now.  coleman won the recount before the avalanche of extracurricular activities that we all know is about to happen.

Coleman lead is 192 with 1 precinct left

BUFFALO, Minn. (AP) - Minnesota's Senate recount is one precinct from conclusion, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman maintains a slight edge.

Coleman has a 192-vote lead over Democrat Al Franken with only a single Minneapolis precinct outstanding after Wright County wrapped up Friday morning. That lead is down slightly from the 215-vote margin Coleman had heading into the recount.

But the outcome of the race is still far from clear. Officials in Minneapolis say they are trying to find about 130 missing ballots before they conclude their work, and the city also announced Friday that they had discovered about 10 uncounted absentee ballots. The Coleman campaign is disputing that the city has any missing ballots.

And the two campaigns have challenged more than 6,600 ballots.

The campaigns have said they'll withdraw at least 1,200 of those challenges, but a state canvassing board that meets starting Dec. 16 will have to decide on all those that remain.

Link

[Wretched Excess]

Coleman leads with 100% of the vote recounted

[Ralph Wiggum]

Franken won't go away quietly.  His campaign is REALLY pissing & moaning about those supposed 130+ ballots.  I don't even believe they exist.  There really is no proof.

[Wretched Excess]

Maybe not, idiot.

[Wretched Excess]

   they just keep finding votes until they get the result they want.  they are literally digging up votes.

The search party looking for 133 missing ballots in the Minneapolis elections warehouse found some ballots all right, but not the ones they wanted.

This morning, an envelope of 12 unsealed but apparently uncounted absentee ballots were found in a box filled with stacks of plastic-wrapped unused ballots. Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert speculated they were put there by a confused elections judge on Election Day and undiscovered until now, the final day of the historic U.S. Senate recount.

The ballots will be submitted to the state Canvassing Board, said city spokesman Matt Laible.

Still eluding the searchers was their main object -- the 133 ballots cast in a Dinkytown church, placed in an envelope, shipped to the warehouse and subsequently AWOL.

Elections officials think the envelope is hiding somewhere among the voting machines, collapsible stands, shelving and boxes in the warehouse on Harding Street NE. Minneapolis election officials, joined by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann, clean-election advocates and others, rolled the voting machines one by one across the floor, hoping to find an envelope underneath.

More

[Ralph Wiggum]

Franken up by 4 votes after hand count, campaign says

Better consider the source, however.

[jinxmchue]

Even every one of the missing or uncounted ballots being for him, Frankenstein can't win.

[JohnnyReb]

Even every one of the missing or uncounted ballots being for him, Frankenstein can't win.

Democrat votes are like stock...........they split.

[Rick]

Leave them alone in the dark and they breed.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Even every one of the missing or uncounted ballots being for him, Frankenstein can't win.

Not that simple unfortunately, the challenged ballots are far more than enough to tip it either way and I don't think they are counted in the current total. 

[Wretched Excess]

Not that simple unfortunately, the challenged ballots are far more than enough to tip it either way and I don't think they are counted in the current total. 

I believe that a challenged ballot is removed from the total of the candidate that it was originally tallied for, so it could get even more complicated.

[Wretched Excess]

more from the star-tribune . . . I halfway expect franken to ask harry reid to get involved.  the senate CAN declare the seat vacant, and the minnesota will have to decide what to do.

Like the election itself, the Senate recount has ended -- except that it hasn't.

At 11:29 a.m. Friday at the Wright County Government Center in Buffalo, state Elections Director Gary Poser pasted a sticker on one last challenged ballot and whispered, almost to himself: "We're done."

But not quite. Officials continued to search for 133 Minneapolis ballots that apparently are missing. And until those ballots are found or judged impossible to locate, the recount won't be over, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said Friday.

By mid-afternoon, Minneapolis officials had turned their elections warehouse inside out but failed to find the envelope containing the ballots.

Pending the fate of the missing ballots, the Star Tribune calculates that Republican Sen. Norm Coleman leads Democrat Al Franken by 192 votes -- a margin 23 votes narrower than the 215-vote lead that Coleman was awarded by the state Canvassing Board just before the recount began Nov. 19.

More

[Ptarmigan]

They are still recounting??????????????? 

[Schadenfreude]

They are still recounting??????????????? 

Oh yeah, gotta count the spoiled ballots as well. You know, someone fills out an absentee and then shows up at the polling place on E Day. Or someone fills out an absentee and "forgets" to sign. It's amazing how you can pick up a vote here and a vote there. 

[Crazy Horse]

Oh yeah, gotta count the spoiled ballots as well. You know, someone fills out an absentee and then shows up at the polling place on E Day. Or someone fills out an absentee and "forgets" to sign. It's amazing how you can pick up a vote here and a vote there. 

I'm really starting to hope franken wins.................this country needs to see what liberals are

[Lord Undies]

I'm really starting to hope franken wins.................this country needs to see what liberals are

The senate is no place to allow someone a seat just to educate the masses about stupidity.  Franken deserves nothing.  He does not deserve to exist in a senate where the majority of memebers are on his side.  Franken does not deserve the salary, the benefits, or the cushy retirement he will fall into.  Franken deserves, in my opinion as not The Lord, to rot in hell (or an institution on earth which can't feed his tremendously untalented asinine ego).

[Schadenfreude]

The senate is no place to allow someone a seat just to educate the masses about stupidity.  Franken deserves nothing.  He does not deserve to exist in a senate where the majority of memebers are on his side.  Franken does not deserve the salary, the benefits, or the cushy retirement he will fall into.  Franken deserves, in my opinion as not The Lord, to rot in hell (or an institution on earth which can't feed his tremendously untalented asinine ego).

He is a loathesome little git..... no offense to gits.

[Chris_]

The senate is no place to allow someone a seat just to educate the masses about stupidity. 

For that matter though, neither is the Presidency.  And yet, look at who we have taking the center seat in 5 weeks.

[Mr Mannn]

I think it would be more fun to deny franken the seat and watch him bitch and throw fits for the next few years.

[Baruch Menachem]

What is really amazing is that almost half the voters of MN thought he was qualified and worth voting for.   That sure is a big knock against MN.

[thundley4]

What is really amazing is that almost half the voters of MN thought he was qualified and worth voting for.   That sure is a big knock against MN.

It would have been understandable if they voted in mid-winter , then they could use brain freeze as an excuse.  Of course we have to assume 1/3 of the votes for the clown are fraudulent, so that makes it lees than half of the population being idiots. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

What is really amazing is that almost half the voters of MN thought he was qualified and worth voting for.   That sure is a big knock against MN.

I expect some of them did it just on the "Oh, Jeeze, we gotta get that bastard outta here, if we elect him he'll have to leave and go to DC" theory.

[Atomic Lib Smasher]

I'm really starting to hope franken wins.................this country needs to see what liberals are

I think they are already, with 3 weeks of Frankenwhine throwing temper tantrums like a 3 year old in a grocery store whose dad took the candy out of the cart and put it back on the shelves.