Absentee ballots galore

A batch of previously rejected votes in the Coleman-Franken race is tallied, and counting in NY-20 begins Wednesday.

Published April 7, 2009 9:35PM (EDT)

There's all sorts of absentee ballot news today (hence the headline). First, out in Minnesota, an additional 351 absentee ballots that had previously been rejected were added to the total in the Senate race between former Sen. Coleman, a Republican, and Democrat Al Franken. The count only hurt Coleman's prospects for a comeback, as Franken won a sizeable majority of the new ballots, extending his lead from 225 to 315 votes. Coleman is expected to appeal the decision of the three-judge panel currently hearing the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and possibly beyond.

And in New York's 20th congressional district, where a special election was recently held to fill a seat left by Kirsten Gillibrand's appointment to the Senate, absentee ballots will be tallied beginning Wednesday. The election board won't have all military ballots in until April 14th, and Republican Jim Tedisco's camp wanted to delay counting until then, but Democrat Scott Murphy won a court fight on the issue. The lead in the race has changed several times since Election Day, and Tedisco is currently ahead by 97 votes, with 76,914 to Murphy's 76,817.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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