Al Franken Election: Coleman's Lead Shrinks To 174 Votes

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:

The Great Minnesota Recount kicked off Wednesday with masses of volunteers for Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken moving into a fresh phase of the struggle: eyeballing the first of 2.9 million ballots, ready to pounce on anything that looked questionable.

By day's end, with about 18 percent of the vote recounted, Coleman continued to lead Franken -- but by only 174 votes, notably narrower than the unofficial gap of 215 votes at which the recount had begun. Franken's gain owed much to a swing of 23 votes in the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis County -- the result of faintly marked ballots and older optical scanners that failed to read the marks.

The figures represent a Star Tribune compilation of recount data reported to the secretary of state and gathered by the Star Tribune.

Read the whole story.

Read more about Al Franken here and more about the recount here.

Comments

[billw8017]

I suppose that as Democrats won among first time voters, a visual inspection of the ballots as to intention might pick up some odd votes like names circled or check marks next to one candidate instead of filling in the square. It's a nice thought.

[bubbuh]

Shrinkage. How embarrassing.

[Hugh-Gee]

I sort of figure that the closer Franken comes to beating Coleman, the safer Chambliss will be in GA, because more Democratic success might worry more Republicans into supporting him.

However, the MN recount won't be complete 'til Dec. 19 or thereabouts, weeks after the GA runoff. (Plus which, of course, Georgians are early-voting as we speak.)

So...I guess I don't know.

[fredfep]

Do you ever notice that the Republican whiners never actually have a clue as to what they are supporting or against. They haven't been given the correect blather this time, so they still obsess on the emaninglessness of ACORN in terms of the voting process. I doubt they even know what these candidates stand for, thus the absurdness about Franken's career and the nonsense of stealing from kids.

Beck and Rush and the rest may be too busy soon figuring out whether hate speech and inciting people to maybe kill, is free speech and allowed, so I would advise you wingnuts to begin to read. You might be surprised 1) if you can read whole sentences, and 2) what you would find out if you paid attention

[SnapShots]

It would be very pleasing to see Franken win. If he loses, it would then be very pleasing to see Franken as FCC Chairman.

[pjandrews]

Did anyone else happen to notice that if Al keeps on winning votes at exactly the current rate (+39 votes after 18% of the votes are recounted), he will end up at +216 vs. Senator Coleman current 215 vote lead -- that is, Al will have cast THE vote on his own behalf which puts Senator Coleman in the unemployment line! Just when the Repubs thought it couldn't get any worse -- fun to think about!

[Warheit]

Let's see, after 18% counted, Franken gains 41 votes. If that same ratio prevails, then after 100% counted, Franken gains 228 votes. Franken wins by 13 votes! It's a landslide!!

[CostaDelBarto]

This is so close it's bizarre.

[research]

I hope Al wins.

We get some great Zingers if he does.

[cae]

Go Al!

[sunzen]

Its amazing they always put the older malfunctioning machines in the urban areas which mirrors the public school system. Better in the suburbs and worse in the city.

[fiorastar]

So, if the "older optical scanners" were in the Democratic strongholds, can we assume the new ones that can read more easily are in the Republican areas? Kind of par for the course, eh?

[Jo Manning]

Cripes, this needs to go to another election! And those ballots...so obvious what the intent of these voters -- many of whom seem to me to be arthritic or otherwise disabled -- was in this election.

[CR46]

If Norm Coleman does win I think he can look forward to a trial and expulsion from the Senate!!

[CR46]

St Louis County and the "Iron Range" came through fro Al, lets hope the other counties did too!!!

[mh01]

The recount in St. Louis County right now is 38,298 for Coleman and 64,471 for Franken. Or 37.3% for Coleman and 62.7% for Franken.

Although interestingly, St louis county is where a batch of 100 ballots were found, as well as another batch of 32 ballots were found after the election. All 132 ballots (100%) were votes for Franken.

I'm not sayin, i'm just sayin....

[hjfraser2002]

Makes you wonder.

[doctorwang]

Perhaps the G0P, realizing that there would be a publicly mandated recount, decided to pony up the ballots they initially tried to conceal so they wouldn't be exposed as cheaters?