Minnesota board’s decision to help Franken

Minnesota’s Board of Canvassers on Friday handed a victory to
Democrat Al Franken, who is engaged in a fierce battle to unseat Sen. Norm
Coleman (R).

The board unanimously voted to ask county-level boards across the
state to count ballots that, Franken’s campaign alleges, were improperly
disqualified in the Senate race. The decision is technically a recommendation
without any force of law.

{mosads}“We are pleased
that the state canvassing board has affirmed what we always believed to be
true: Minnesota is not a state that disenfranchises its voters,” said Franken
campaign communications director Andy Barr. “Today’s decisions represent
positive and productive steps towards ensuring that this election is decided
fairly and accurately, as well as a complete rejection of the Coleman
campaign’s effort to throw out lawful votes from Minnesotans.”

The Board of Canvassers said it expected to receive the tallies,
amended to include the disqualified absentee ballots, sometime next week.

The decision came after Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson
(D) recommended their inclusion.

“They followed the rules,” she said of the voters whose ballots
were disqualified. “They had their votes rejected through no fault of their
own.”

The counties had begun to sort out ballots that the board said
were disqualified for no legal reason. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, 638
such votes were identified in the 49 of 87 counties that have sorted the
ballots.

The decision comes after another Franken victory before the board
Friday morning. The five-member, bipartisan panel ordered an election-night
tally in a Minneapolis precinct to be used instead of a hand recount during
which 133 ballots went missing. The election-night tally is expected to benefit
Franken.

Coleman leads Franken by 192 votes, according to the Star Tribune’s tally. Franken’s campaign has said it
leads by four votes, citing an internal tally assuming the challenges lodged by
both campaigns against nearly 4,500 ballots will be thrown out. The Board of
Canvassers will meet next week to examine the validity of those ballots.

A request for comment to a Coleman spokesman was not immediately returned.