Court Extends Recount Deadline, Protects Voter Privacy

A Minnesota's Supreme Court order guarantees there will not be a new Senator from Minnesota until at least January 5, 2009.  The court on Wednesday agreed with a motion from the Secretary of State and extended the time given to counties to sort and count rejected absentee ballots and changed counting provisions so voter privacy is protected.

The counties now have until January 4th to finish their work.  The State Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet on January 5th and possibly January 6th to review the new totals and possibly certify a winner in the race between Democrat Al Franken and incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman.

To protect voter privacy, the procedure the counties, the Secretary of State, and the State Canvassing Board will use to count the votes will be different than other ballots.  The Secretary of State's office informed the court that because names of those who cast improperly rejected absentee ballots have already been released, publishing the results for some precincts could essentially reveal for whom a particular voter cast his ballot.   Tuesday Secretary of State Mark Ritchie indicated all the votes from improperly rejected absentee ballots may be reported as one total without breaking out by precinct.

Unofficial media tallies show Franken is leading by about 47 votes.  That total may change slightly on December 30th when the State Canvassing Board makes adjustments to its totals for any clerical errors.  That total does not include the estimated 1,600 wrongfully rejected absentee ballots.

One other factor in the race may be a suit the Coleman campaign has filed in Minnesota's Supreme Court.  The Coleman suit asks that that certain ballots from mostly Minneapolis precincts not be counted because they could be duplicates of ballots that were already counted.  The court heard arguments on that case on Tuesday and did not indicate when it would rule.

During Tuesday's arguments, it became clear that the Coleman campaign is preparing to possibly challenge the election results in court.  Justices on the high court mentioned that the case the Coleman campaign was trying to make may be better handled in such an election challenges.  A lawyer for the Coleman campaign said that was a possibility.