The fight gets ugly

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has an article by Pat Doyle about the recount fracas:

Nearly seven weeks after Norm Coleman entered the recount with a slim lead, his chances of retaining his Senate seat now depend increasingly on his bid to count hundreds of rejected absentee ballots from mostly Republican-leaning precincts. The state Canvassing Board prepared to meet today with Al Franken holding a 225-vote edge, a lead that widened over the weekend and made Coleman's task more difficult. The campaigns were largely quiet Sunday while they awaited word from the Minnesota Supreme Court on what to do with the rejected absentee ballots. Barring court action, the board could certify the results of the recount this afternoon, presumably with Franken on top. If that happens, the Coleman campaign has indicated it's likely to file an "election contest", a legal challenge to the election. That battle probably would leave the seat vacant for weeks.
Asked whether Coleman would sue, Coleman recount lawyer Fritz Knaak said: "He doesn't have to make that decision yet. I have no reason at this time ... to believe we aren't going to be contesting this thing if we're down at the end of the day. The only thing that could waver or change that would be a call from Norm Coleman saying, 'I don't think so', and I don't see that coming," Knaak said.
Franken's unofficial lead rose from 49 votes to 225 on Saturday, when the secretary of state's office counted 933 absentee ballots that had been identified by local officials and the two campaigns as wrongly rejected. Coleman has asked the Supreme Court to order counties to send hundreds of other rejected absentee ballots to the secretary of state to review for possible counting.
If the court refuses to make the additional ballots available before a Canvassing Board decision, Coleman can file the lawsuit within days to seek to have them admitted. Knaak said the suit also could claim that as many as 150 ballots in DFL areas were counted twice and that the counting of some missing ballots inflated Franken's lead by another 46 votes.
Franken's increased lead prompted New York Senator Charles Schumer, who was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during last year's elections, to declare Sunday that Franken had won. But Knaak dismissed the comment as an attempt by Democrats to pressure Republicans and Coleman to give up. "The Republicans are not at all, in the Senate and in Washington, interested in folding to that kind of pressure," he said. Senate Republicans have threatened to filibuster any attempt by Democratic leaders to seat Franken provisionally while a legal fight was playing out. In an email Sunday, Franken campaign spokesman Andy Barr said: "In terms of future planning, we're taking it one step at a time. The next step is the canvass board's meeting tomorrow, where we have every expectation they will declare that Al won the election."
In its request to the Supreme Court, the Coleman campaign has argued that counties applied inconsistent policies in considering whether to count rejected absentee ballots. The court asked for, and received, additional information Saturday from various parties but had not issued a ruling when this edition went to press.
In Saturday's counting of the 933 absentee ballots that were identified as wrongly rejected, Franken won 52 percent and Coleman captured 33 percent. The rest either went to other candidates or included no votes in the Senate race.
Franken's success on that front didn't surprise Ramsey County elections chief Joe Mansky. He said the ranks of absentee voters were swelled this election by a large number of "very young voters, either first-time voters or maybe not so young but who traditionally had not been in the voting population. If you believe the polls, that group was strongly skewed toward the Democrats," he said.

Rico says it'd have been a lot easier if the damn voters has just obviously picked one over the other, but this is going to take awhile to sort out...