Greg Laden's Blog

Something very interesting just happened in Minnesota.

You know about the recount, and you know that today the canvassing board is deciding what to do about a number of possibly improperly rejected absentee ballots.

At least 630, and possibly as many as 1,500, absentee ballots have been improperly rejected in the Minnesota Senate race. If they are included in the recount to determine if Al Franken or Norm Coleman should be senator, there is a pretty good chance that these will favor Franken. I would estimate that the consideration of Absentee ballots could shift the numbers by between 80 and 110 votes towards Franken, who currently trails in unofficial counts by 192 votes.

Well, the State Canvasing board has decided, moments ago, to recommend to each county to consider these ballots.

This could get interesting. Prepare for about 30 law suits to be initiated over the next three or four days. The counties can individually decide to follow this recommendation or not. Republican election commissioners will be tempted to not count these ballots, because every vote counted would be a potential vote against their candidate, Coleman. The republican strategy is generally to win by disfranchisement. So the best strategy for Coleman is to not count these absentee ballots.

Of course, the above cited shift of 80 - 110 votes will occur mainly in counties where the absentee ballots are very likely to be looked at because they are Democratic leaning areas with a likely Franken-friendly election board.

Indeed, the strong Coleman counties may have an opposite effect, so it could be better for Franken if Pro-Coleman county officials refused to look at the Absentee Ballots.

But then, if they do that, given that they may actually favor Coleman, we will see the Coleman team trying to get those absentee ballots counted, even though they (The Coleman people) have been saying all along that all of these absentee ballots should be thown out.

So, It is quite possible that instead of seeing Team Franken suing conservative right wing yahooistic Republican county election officials to count the ballots, you might see Coleman's lawyers suing them. Just the opposite of what one might think.

This is a veritable battle of wits ...