Whatever the outcome in the Senate vote recount, one of the big winners is the Twin Cities local rag of record, the Star Tribune, which has provided impressively innovative coverage of the U.S. Senate Race recount.
Today, for example, the Star Trib has above-the-fold links on its front web page to: live streaming video from the canvassing board; a “place our recount widget on your site” link, a running tally (Franken +70 as we go to press), along with reports on the MN Supreme Court’s order to count rejected absentee ballots; a review of Thursday’s votes by the canvassing board; and an invitation to “take the Coleman-Franken ballot challenge” and make your own determination.
For those who want to skip the excruciating minutia of the recount, and cut to the chase, there’s also Paul Walsh’s continuously updated “Franken Passes Coleman in Recount, But …” noting that “the first rush of ballot rulings has unofficially put the challenger in the lead.”
The MN Supreme Court Order to count the improperly-rejected absentee ballots is a bit of a wash-out, since it requires Franken and Coleman to agree on which ballots should be recounted. That part of the ruling didn’t sit well with Associate Justice Alan Page, who complained that “the court’s order will arbitrarily disqualify enfranchised voters on the whim of the candidates and political parties.” (That would be former all-pro Viking defensive tackle Alan Page, who is also the “biggest vote-getter in MN history.”)
For Dems, the good news is that Franken has an excellent chance to win, although the outcome may not be decided before the new congress reconvenes in January.