Franken v. Coleman: What's next?

By GottaLaff

The long and winding road:

The hand recount in Minnesota's Coleman-Franken race comes to an end today. But that just signals the beginning of the end of this recount drama: On Dec. 12, the state canvassing board meets to discuss the options of dealing with mistakenly rejected absentee ballots (The Franken folks see this as crucial to their hopes. The number of these absentee ballots -- 500 to 1,000 -- will be larger than the votes separating Coleman and Franken after the recount is completed.) And on Dec. 16, the canvassing board begins to rule on the challenged ballots, which will be posted online, and that process that will last through Dec. 19. One other date worth pointing out: Starting Monday through the week of the 16th, county officials will be reexamining, but not counting, the rejected absentee ballots (more than 9,000 in total) and re-separating them into "five piles" -- the first four piles are for ballots rejected for one of four legal reasons. Those NOT rejected for a legal reason go into the "fifth pile." Those are the 500-1,000 ballots that Franken is counting on. Confused enough?

Just fill in the little oval next to the name of the candidate you want in office. Have a question? Ask it. Like to doodle? Do it on your own time, on your own scrap of paper.