At the end of the statewide recount, Franken led by 225 votes, and today he sent letters to Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (D), arguing that Minnesota should have full representation in the Senate as the upper chamber begins to debate its agenda. The state leaders have yet to respond.

According to state law, the election certificate cannot be signed within seven days of the certification of the result. That seven-day window has now elapsed, but it is unclear whether Franken can be seated in Washington while Coleman’s lawsuit is pending.

In the meantime, Coleman’s case has taken a serious hit. He is seeking to have 654 rejected absentee ballots counted, even though they have twice been ruled faulty — on Election Day, and upon a second review by election officials last month. Now it looks as if they will be rejected for the third time.

Several counties have once again reviewed these ballots, and the numbers aren’t good for Coleman. Nate Silver reports that of the 151 of these ballots that the counties have reevaluated, just one has been deemed improperly rejected. For Coleman, that’s a success rate of two-thirds of one percent.

Of course, Coleman’s aim is to have the courts rule in his favor, and local officials will probably not play much of a role. But at a time when Coleman needs literally everything to go his way if he is to have a chance of overturning Franken’s victory, this isn’t a good start.

UPDATE 2:08 PM: The Minnesota Independent reports that Pawlenty has rejected Franken’s request for a signed election certificate, citing a statute indicating that election contests must be resolved before a certificate can be issued.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CQ that there “likely will be an attempt to seat [Franken] this week.”

Yet when I talked to Franken spokesman Andy Barr on the phone earlier this afternoon, he wouldn’t say whether Franken had plans to fly to Washington.

“We’re not looking anywhere beyond the [canvassing board] meeting this afternoon,” Barr told me. When I asked if this meant that Franken had no imminent plans to head to the capital, he responded, “I’m not saying that,” adding, “He’s in Minneapolis and we’re looking forward to the canvassing board meeting.”

It’s entirely possible that the Democratic leaders in the Senate still haven’t worked out a game plan for Franken, especially since seating him could be difficult if they try to prevent Roland Burris from being seated. We should have a clearer picture by the end of the day.

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 ballot was wrongfully discarded before it can be counted — and GOP Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign is not making that easy.

The Franken team has agreed that all 1,346 ballots should be counted. But the Coleman camp is recommending the inclusion of just 778 of these ballots, as well as 67 ballots that were not flagged by election officials as improperly rejected. And guess what? The ballots are mostly from Republican-leaning areas!

From the Star Tribune:

Coleman’s proposed additions skew heavily toward suburban and rural counties where he did best in the election.

I explained in my last post why Coleman wouldn’t want all 1,346 ballots to be counted, but he seems to be going a bit overboard here. His campaign has given no indication that there’s an overarching logic to its choices, other than cherry-picking for Coleman’s own benefit.

The Coleman team will be taking a closer look at these ballots today, tomorrow and Friday.

UPDATE: The Star Tribune has analyzed 93 percent of the absentee ballots in question and determined that Franken is likely to gain from them. More motivation for Coleman’s selective approval of the ballots.

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 this description. But the two campaigns must agree that a ballot was improperly rejected in order for it to be counted — and compromise in this election is hard to come by.

The Franken campaign wants to count all 1,346 of the ballots. The Coleman team, on the other hand, has so far agreed to just 136 of these ballots, though it promised that more would be forthcoming.

Franken holds an unofficial 46-vote lead after the Minnesota State Canvassing Board finished reviewing challenged ballots a week ago. These absentee ballots, then, could easily make the difference in this tight race.

According to the Star Tribune, about 60 percent of these ballots are from Hennepin, St. Louis, Ramsey and Dakota counties. I ran the numbers, using the county-by-county election returns, and found that Franken won 56.9 percent of the vote in these counties, to Coleman’s 43.1 percent. If these numbers hold, Franken would gain 460 votes from these counties if all 1,346 ballots are counted, while Coleman would gain 348.

Franken’s lead would then grow from 46 to 158. In order for Coleman to win the race, he would have to win 64.7 percent of the 538 ballots from the remaining counties. Considering that he won only 55.6 percent of the overall vote in these counties, his chances of winning the election are slim if all 1,346 absentee ballots are counted.

It’s easy to understand why the Coleman campaign is doing its best to prevent that from happening.

The Coleman team argued that these ballots, whose originals and duplicates could not be properly matched, had been counted twice, and that the canvassing board should not certify the election results until this issue was resolved. Most of these ballots came from Minneapolis, which voted overwhelmingly (78 percent) for Franken, and their exclusion could have helped Coleman overcome his current deficit of 46 votes.

But the court ruled unanimously that the Coleman campaign lacked sufficient evidence of double counting, making it likely that Franken will be certified as the winner sometime in January. Coleman’s lawyers have said that they will contest the certified result.

The court also granted the two campaigns more time to identify absentee ballots that were wrongly rejected.   The deadline for the allocation of the ballots was extended from Dec. 31 to Jan. 4. The extra time was alloted to allow for more fair and more effective counting. The decision also makes it “highly unlikely” that Minnesota will be able to seat its second senator on Jan. 6, according to a Coleman lawyer.

The 1,500 or so absentee ballots deemed wrongly rejected during the recount are expected to add slightly to Franken’s lead. For this reason, the Franken campaign has been pushing to include them, while the Coleman team has resisted.

So Franken inches closer to the finish line, but we won’t know for sure which campaign will reach it until next month. Stay tuned — or better yet, enjoy the holidays.

The Coleman campaign, getting a bit desperate as Franken emerges as the likely winner, this morning began challenging the challenges, arguing that 16 challenged ballots were not properly ruled on. But the board would have none of it, and it stuck with its initial rulings. After reviewing these 16 ballots, it expressed even “more confidence” in its decision-making. Board member Eric Magnuson, who also serves as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, warned against further challenges, saying, “I think you have a sense of how we’re disposed to rule on these things.”

Last night, Franken was projected to lead by 48 votes at the conclusion of the process, consistent with his campaign’s earlier prediction of a 35- to 50-vote lead. That projection held as the board completed its review.

Still on the table:

1. Today’s Minnesota Supreme Court ruling on double-counted ballots, as alleged by the Coleman campaign.

2. Around 1,500 improperly rejected absentee ballots that should be counted, though the implementation of this process will be quite contentious. Both campaigns must agree that a ballot was improperly rejected for it to be counted — and given their track record, agreement between the two campaigns is hard to come by.

3. Lawsuits, lawsuits and more lawsuits.

Of course, it’s nearly inconceivable that this lead will hold. Two factors could easily shift the balance: the Coleman campaign’s allegation of duplicate ballots, and the Franken campaign’s court-backed push to count around 1,500 improperly rejected absentee ballots.

As I argued earlier today, if Coleman is successful in excluding the alleged duplicate votes, he is likely to end up with a slim lead (around 26 votes, by my calculation). But that’s a big “if” — and it would probably be more than offset if all of the absentee ballots in question are counted, as Franken is expected to gain around 100 votes from this process.

Tomorrow is the big day when the canvassing board is expected to complete its review of the challenged ballots and the Minnesota Supreme Court is set to rule on the duplicates. Stay tuned.

The Franken team’s prediction, announced on Saturday, is actually a bit more modest than The Star Tribune’s projection of a 78-vote Franken victory. From The Hill:

“We now have enough data that I can say with a very high degree of confidence that Al Franken will win this count and be seated as the next senator from Minnesota,” Franken attorney Marc Elias told reporters Saturday.

However, the Coleman campaign has argued that a number of ballots were counted twice, due to an improper correlation of original and duplicate ballots. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Coleman seeks to “have about 130 ballots, mostly from largely Democratic Minneapolis, tossed out.”

I ran some calculations based on these numbers, and here’s what I found:

Minneapolis gave Franken 141,675 votes on Election Day, compared to 39,309 for Coleman. That’s 78.3 percent for Franken, and 21.7 percent for Coleman.

Let’s assume, for simplicity’s sake, that there are exactly 130 ballots in question, that they’re all from Minneapolis and that these voters cast their ballots along the same lines as the city as a whole — big assumptions, I know, but bear with me. In this case, Franken would lose 102 votes if these alleged duplicates are discarded and Coleman would lose 28 — a net gain of 74 votes for Coleman.

This would leave Coleman with a lead of 24 to 49 votes, based on the Franken campaign’s prediction. Using The Star Tribune’s model, Franken would retain a lead of just four votes (coincidentally, this is the exact margin that the Franken team predicted more than two weeks ago.)

However, this is far from a done deal, because Franken’s lawyers don’t plan to go down without a fight. From the Pioneer Press:

Elias said the Coleman campaign’s duplicate-original contention is sheer fiction.

It also is unfair, he said, because while the Coleman campaign was able to challenge and separate out originals for which no duplicates could be found in Minneapolis, the Franken campaign was not allowed to do so in several more Republican areas.

The only resolution would be to reopen the recount in all 87 Minnesota counties, Elias suggested.

So there’s still a lot up in the air. Even if everything goes Coleman’s way on this issue and he takes a lead, Franken could still win easily if all of the improperly rejected absentee ballots are included, as they are likely to be.

The bottom line: by the end of the day tomorrow, when the canvassing board completes its review of the challenges and the Supreme Court rules on the duplicates, we should have a much clearer picture of the outcome of this election.

Withdrawn challenges have not yet been processed. Since Franken withdrew about 400 more challenges than Norm Coleman, Coleman will make up significant ground once these are taken into account. Exactly how much ground depends on the nature of the challenges — a withdrawn challenge to an initial non-vote (when the election official decided that voter intent could not be discerned, or that the vote went to a third-party candidate) will result in no change, whereas a withdrawn challenge to a vote for a certain candidate will result in a gain of one vote for that candidate.

For example, let’s assume that half of each campaign’s withdrawn challenges were initially aimed at turning votes from the other candidate into non-votes, and the other half were aimed at turning non-votes into votes for the campaign’s candidate. In this case, if Franken withdrew 400 more challenges than Coleman, then Coleman would gain 200 net votes when the withdrawn challenges are processed. If, on the other hand, three-quarters of the withdrawn challenges were to initial votes for the opposing candidate, then Coleman could expect to net 300 votes.

With Franken’s lead currently at 266, the makeup of these withdrawn challenges could make all the difference in determining which candidate will come out ahead at the end of this challenged ballot review.

Then, of course, we get to the rejected absentee ballots, which are expected to help Franken, and the inevitable litigation, which will more likely come from the Coleman camp.

This election is by no means decided, although I still feel good about my bet on Franken, even with the 2-to-1 odds I gave our CEO.

Side note: InTrade’s been monitoring the race, but their odds have lagged a couple days behind mine. On the 15th, they put Franken’s chances of winning at just under 55 percent. It took more than two days, and a lot of developments in Franken’s favor, for them to catch up. Now they give him close to 80 percent.

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 ballots remain to be reviewed, and the board hopes to finish the process tonight.

Also, last night the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots that were improperly rejected must be counted in the final tally, reports The Minnesota Independent. Over a strong dissent, a three-justice majority decided that these ballots should be included, but that both campaigns must agree that a ballot was rejected without cause for it to be counted. This represents a big victory for the Franken campaign, which is expected to gain about 100 net votes from these ballots.

It now appears that unless Coleman can win a major lawsuit to disqualify a high number of Franken ballots, Al Franken will be the next U.S. senator from Minnesota.

UPDATE 12:12 PM: Franken’s lead has now surpassed 150 votes, with around 100 challenged ballots left to review. My prediction of “low triple digits” is looking pretty good.