The decision of the five-member state Canvassing Board that recounted the votes came as a blow to Democrat Al Franken. It was clear that he has lost the election. He had been banking heavily on the reconsideration of the absentee ballots.
The five-member board declared that they would not take into count the absentee votes and thus were not included in the Minnesota election votes recount. Frankens campaigner had put in a petition to the five-member state Canvassing Board to reconsider the results of the Minnesota voting. He said that certain votes had been excluded from the initial counting, as there were administrative and technical errors. He wanted the absentee ballots to be reconsidered and revisited and where necessary be counted as valid votes.
The Republican candidate Sen Norm Coleman objected to this saying that the Board did not have the power to revisit the ballots. It was estimated by Statewide, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie that about 12, 000 absentee ballots had been rejected. He could not say whether the reason for rejecting them were valid all the time.
When the recounting started Franken was behind Coleman by 215 votes out of 2.9 million ballots. The battle seems to be lost as now 80% of the votes have been counted and the lead remains intact.
