minnesota senate

DFL Senator-apparent Al Franken today asked Minnesota’s governor and secretary of state to certify his election victory so that he can provisionally join the U.S. Senate while his opponent, former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal challenge is resolved.
At the end of the statewide recount, Franken led by 225 votes, and today he sent letters to [...]

At 3:30 ET today, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board is expected to declare Al Franken the winner of his U.S. Senate race against incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman, and Senate Democrats may try to seat him tomorrow when the new Congress is sworn in, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CQ [...]

The Minnesota State Canvassing Board finally closed the books on challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate race, and challenger Al Franken holds 50-vote lead after a number of clerical errors were resolved.
Now we turn to the 1,346 absentee ballots that were identified by election officials as improperly rejected. The two campaigns must agree that a [...]

The Minnesota Senate race hit another bump today as the campaigns of Al Franken and Sen. Norm Coleman disagreed over which absentee ballots to count, to the surprise of no one.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Dec. 18 that all improperly rejected absentee ballots must be counted, and local election officials found that 1,346 ballots fit [...]

Today the Minnesota Supreme Court removed one of the few remaining obstacles to Al Franken’s ascension to the U.S. Senate when it denied Sen. Norm Coleman campaign’s request to prevent about 130 alleged double-counted ballots from being counted.
The Coleman team argued that these ballots, whose originals and duplicates could not be properly matched, had been [...]

The Minnesota State Canvassing Board today finally completed its review of challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate recount, and Democratic-Farmer-Labor challenger Al Franken holds a 48-vote lead over Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
The Coleman campaign, getting a bit desperate as Franken emerges as the likely winner, this morning began challenging the challenges, arguing that 16 [...]

With nearly all of the challenged ballots tallied, Democratic-Farmer-Labor challenger Al Franken holds a 48-vote lead over Sen. Norm Coleman in the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, reports the Star Tribune. That figure is consistent with the Franken campaign’s prediction of a 35- to 50-vote lead.
Of course, it’s nearly inconceivable that this lead will hold. [...]

When the Minnesota State Canvassing Board completes its review of challenged ballots tomorrow, the Al Franken campaign expects to hold a slim lead of 35 to 50 votes. But a state Supreme Court decision tomorrow in Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s favor on the issue of duplicate ballots could easily restore the lead to Coleman, possibly [...]

For those of you who, like me, are obsessively watching the livestream of the Minnesota State Canvassing Board’s review of the challenged Senate ballots (Franken’s lead right now is 266), let me issue a reminder, lest you think that Al Franken is running away with this race.

Al Franken took his first official lead in the Minnesota Senate recount this morning, as the canvassing board continued to reject the vast majority of Sen. Norm Coleman’s challenges.
Franken will hold a solid lead, likely in the low triple digits, by the time the canvassing board concludes its review of the challenged ballots. About 300 [...]