The Lower 48

Who knows when this is all said and done, but if it were to end right now, Al Franken would be the next Senator from Minnesota by a spread of 48 votes.

The Minnesota Canvassing Board today allocated the rest of the withdrawn challenged ballots, and Al Franken now unofficially leads by 48 votes. Crazy shit.

The Coleman campaign tried to get the board to reconsider some of its decisions, but was rebuffed.

Left to be decided -- 1) the claim by the Coleman campaign that some absentee ballots were counted twice (Nate discusses that issue here), and 2) the fate of over 1,000 improperly excluded absentee ballots.

The duplicate ballot issue looks to be unlikely to bear fruit. Franken's campaign has signed affidavits from election officials stating that they never counted ballots twice, and the Coleman campaign is trying to cherry-pick which precincts it wants to look at on this issue (and conveniently reverse those counts to their original Election Night numbers, which would benefit him). The absentee ballots are something that Franken's campaign has wanted to count for a while, as they feel it will ultimately help their count. The two sides are supposed to get together and come up with a counting standard, and they have a couple weeks to do so - the canvassing board doesn't meet again until January 5, which means that a winner won't be declared until next year, and possibly not until after the next Senate first convenes.

It looks bleak for Coleman, however. He's running out of options, and calling in Bush's head lawyer from the Florida recount isn't likely to help. For his part, Coleman is getting kind of philosophical about the whole thing.

“I feel fairly confident. In the end, the good Lord’s going to decide,” Coleman told the local Fox affiliate. “The numbers look good to us. Certainly there’s uncertainty. I’m not worried about it. I’ve done everything I can do. I’m not really agonizing about the outcome.”

Coleman went on: “Life goes on, regardless of what your job is. I certainly love what I do. If I can keep doing it, I’ll be thrilled, and if not, I’m sure we’ll do something else.”

Plan on doing something else, Norm. You can play out every challenge, but it's increasingly apparent that the next Senator from Minnesota is Al Franken.