Coleman leads Franken by just 2 votes; Franken projected to win*

By GottaLaff

*UPDATE:

If the pattern remains consistent, Franken should vault past his opponent to a projected lead of approximately 89 votes, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease:

Two votes is all that stands between Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, according to the Associated Press tally in the state’s still-unresolved Senate race.

Coleman’s shrinking lead, combined with a state Supreme Court decision handed down Thursday, has suddenly heightened the prospects that Franken, who has trailed in every count since Election Night, could end up winning the seat after all the votes are counted.

This thing is going to drag on past the 20th:

[T]he eventual loser is expected to seek to overturn the outcome through litigation once the election tally is eventually certified.

But after trailing by 215 votes on Election Night and remaining behind in the recount, Franken’s campaign had renewed optimism Thursday after the board reviewed and ruled on many of the ballots disputed by Coleman.

Coleman’s lead had dwindled to five votes by the end of the day, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s unofficial count, which includes all of the ballots challenged by Franken and ruled upon by the state’s Canvassing Board and some of the more than 800 challenges brought by the Coleman campaign.

So far, the board has ruled on 887 disputed ballots with another 379 Coleman challenges scheduled to be taken up Friday.

Former Republican Minnesota congressman Vin Weber didn’t expect a clear result to emerge for some time.

Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease.

With today’s court ruling, it appears Franken will also eventually net more votes once the rejected absentee ballots are included in the certified count because absentee voters tend to skew in the Democrats’ favor in Minnesota. As many as 1,600 ballots could fall in the mistakenly rejected absentee ballot category.

The court ruled that both campaigns must meet with Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and county election officials to establish a uniform standard for identifying the rejected absentee ballots. [...]

The Franken campaign argued that excluding the absentee ballots would disenfranchise hundreds of voters. [...]

Either way, more litigation is all but certain. Coleman’s campaign already has disputed the decision to include 133 ballots in the recount that appear to have missing from a heavily-Democratic Minneapolis precinct. The ballots were originally counted on Election Night, and the Canvassing Board has agreed to revert to the precinct’s pre-recount tally.

“Litigation is inevitable,” said Schier. “If Franken loses – he’ll argue legitimate votes were not counted. If Coleman loses, he’ll argue illegitimate votes were counted.”

For the record, Nate the Great at Five Thirty Eight says it's a mess:

A just-issued ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court sets the stage for a scene similar to the one at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport right now: confusion, delays, heated tempers, and the possibility for everybody on the manifest to find themselves trapped.

Al, do us all a favor and find three more votes to put you in the lead.