Court orders rejected absentees into Senate count

by Elizabeth Stawicki, Minnesota Public Radio

St. Paul, Minn. — The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that the estimated 1,600 wrongly rejected absentee ballots must be counted in the U.S. Senate recount, but only after the Secretary of State, local elections officials and the Coleman and Franken campaigns agree on a process to identify them.

Democrat Al Franken's campaign had argued that the ballots should be included in the recount. Imcumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign went to the court to stop the count until clear standards could be established.

The decision appears to have the potential to prolong the recount. It gives the Coleman campaign what it wanted in setting a process for identifying wrongly rejected ballots, but it gives the Franken camp access to another source of votes that could overturn the slight lead Coleman had after the first count.

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