Dec 22, 2008 8:37 pm US/Central
Franken Poised To Keep Slight Vote Edge
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ―
Democrat Al Franken is poised to hold on to a 48-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman as the state Canvassing Board prepares to award a final pile of votes in Minnesota's unsettled U.S. Senate race.
The Canvassing Board was scheduled to meet Tuesday and award votes from a remaining group of about 5,000 challenges that had been withdrawn by both campaigns. Based on an analysis of numbers in a draft report released late Monday by the Secretary of State's office, Franken will have earned a total of 48 more votes than Coleman once those votes are allotted. That's out of almost 3 million votes cast in the race in November.
Several outstanding issues could still affect the final vote count. The two campaigns and the Secretary of State's office are negotiating how to handle an estimated 1,600 improperly rejected absentee ballots. In addition, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear arguments over a Coleman claim that about 130 ballots were counted twice.
Franken's 48-vote edge fell in line with a prediction issued by his campaign over the weekend, when attorney Marc Elias forecast that the Democrat would end up with a lead of between 35 and 50 votes.
The Coleman campaign had been hoping that restored votes from the 5,000 withdrawn challenges would put the Republican back on top after Franken claimed his first lead on Friday.
Now, Coleman's hopes hinge on two different scenarios: winning more than half of the votes to be found in the improperly rejected absentee ballots or pulling ahead after alleged duplicate ballots are removed from the vote count -- if the campaign's attorneys can first convince the state Supreme Court that there is a genuine problem with duplicate ballots. The Franken campaign has disputed that claim.
Coleman's campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, said the latest Secretary of State's numbers amounted to an "artificial lead" for Franken because of the duplicate ballot issue.
"We have no doubt that when these issues are properly resolved, Senator Coleman will be re-elected to the Senate," Sheehan said in a statement released by the campaign.
The duplicate ballot issue arose in some precincts on election night, from ballots that couldn't be fed into counting machines because of voter error or some technical reason. In those cases a duplicate ballot was made, and the original is supposed to be set aside.
The Coleman campaign is arguing that in some cases both the original and the duplicate were tallied in the recount. In precincts where they believe problems exist, they want the Supreme Court to order counties to subtract votes from original ballots that don't have a corresponding marked duplicate.
The Franken campaign is arguing that lack of duplicate ballots in some precincts does not prove that an original ballot was counted twice. The Coleman campaign "has no evidentiary basis" for its claim, according to the Franken campaign's filing to the Supreme Court.
Once the Canvassing Board restores the votes from the final group of 5,000 withdrawn challenges, Franken in all will have gained 3,191 votes out of the total pool of challenged votes and Coleman will have gained 2,955 votes. That adds up to a 236-vote advantage for Franken, enough to wipe out the 188-vote lead that Coleman had held before the Canvassing Board started ruling on disputed ballots.
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Norm Coleman was born in New York City in 1949. Al Franken was born in New York City in 1951.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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