Agita: Coleman Spokesman Predicts Al Franken Will Take Lead in Recount for First Time... Temporarily

I don't like the sound of that, temporarily or not.

The Canvassing Board made it through more than 100 ballots in its first hour of work, much faster than it awarded ballots on Tuesday and Wednesday. Their work was aided by Republican Norm Coleman's campaign decision to drop about 400 challenges.

Meanwhile, a Coleman spokesman predicted that Democrat Al Franken would take the lead Thursday for the first time in the recount as many of Coleman's challenges being dropping would go into Franken's column. The spokesman, Mark Drake, predicted it would be a "temporary flip" that Coleman would overcome later as other withdrawn challenges are awarded to the candidates.

Coleman entered this week's phase of the recount with a 188-vote lead, which swelled to 360 after the board spent its first two days handling _ and mostly rejecting _ Franken challenges.

So, most of these challenges are bunkum, but challenged ballots are not counted in the tallies until they're either ruled upon or dropped by the candidate who challenged them. Coleman dropping his challenges is a bit of a nonfactor, considering he was doing tit-for-tat in putting up his own spurious challenges to match Franken's.

Franken may drop some more of his idiotic challenges, thus getting those votes back into Coleman's column. And even if he doesn't -- most of the ballots he hoped to keep from Coleman will still be awarded to Coleman.

Most.

But with the lead in counted ballots at only 188, it wouldn't take many challenges to go Franken's way for him to win. Say, around... oh, 189 or so.

Worst. Election. Ever.

Adventures in Democratic Election Theft: Ann Coulter warns this will not turn out well.

posted by Ace at 03:51 PM

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