With the exception of a precinct in Minneapolis, the recount in Minnesota’s contested U.S. Senate race is just about to wrap up with incumbent Norm Coleman leading Democrat Al Franken by 687 votes, according to unofficial results posted Friday by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

Franken’s campaign meanwhile asserts that their candidate leads Coleman by 4 votes. The methodology includes challenged ballots and the assumption that the votes on the ballots will be upheld by the state canvassing board. Coleman challenged 100 more ballots than Franken.

Cullen Sheehan, Coleman’s campaign manager, refuted claims by Franken’s camp that the Democrat holds a single-digit lead over their candidate. 

‘We are pleased that we remain ahead in this recount,” Sheehan said in a statement. ‘We are confident that when the Canvassing Board begins meeting on December 16th and ultimately completes its work, that Norm Coleman will continue to be ahead, and will be re-elected to the United States Senate.”

State election officials on Friday tallied 1,208,344 votes for Coleman and 1,207,657 votes for Franken. However, there are 133 ballots from a precinct in Minneapolis that are unaccounted for. Election officials have been searching for those ballots, a majority of which are said to contain votes for Franken, for three days.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said Thursday the city of Minneapolis has until Dec. 16 to locate the missing ballots.

The results tabulated by Ritchie do not take into consideration thousands of ballots both campaigns have challenged. Franken and Coleman withdrew a combined 1,280 ballot challenges, where each candidate says voter intent is unclear, out of 6,655 ballots where red flags were raised. Both campaigns are expected to withdraw additional challenged ballots.

The state canvassing board, the panel that is overseeing the recount, will meet on Dec. 16 to review challenged ballots that remain and decide on voter intent.

But there’s still the lingering issue over absentee ballots Franken’s campaign sasaid its own internal review of 12,000 rejected absentee ballots shows that 1,000 or so were improperly rejected. They have called on the canvassing board to count absentee ballots wrongfully rejected in the recount. Franken believes the ballots that were wrongfully rejected will help him move past Coleman and win the coveted Senate seat.

The canvassing board is scheduled to meet on Dec. 12 to determine whether it has the legal authority to count absentee ballots rejected for improper reasons. 

In other words, while the recount may be complete the election is far from over.

Ritchie the sorting of rejected absentee ballots will primarily begin on Monday, Dec. 8. The sorting is being conducted voluntarily by local election officials to provide the state canvassing board with an estimate of the number of absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected because of an administrative error. The secretary of state’s office has asked local election officials to finish by Dec. 18 and report their findings back to the office.

Marc Elias, Franken’s lead recount attorney, said he sent a letter Friday to “all 87 counties asking them that … the ballots for which there is no legal justification for them not being counted be opened and counted.”

One way or another, Elias said, the absentee ballots that were improperly rejected will be counted. 

“Whether it is at the county level, before the Canvass Board, before the courts, or before the United States Senate, we don’t know yet,” Elias said last week. “But we remain confident these votes will be counted.

The canvassing board must certify the contest and declare Coleman or Franken as the winner before one of them can take the Senate seat by the time the 111th Congress convenes in January. If the race is still undecided or if the loser challenges the recount then the full Senate or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty can make a temporary appointment to fill the vacant seat.

Coleman led Franken by 725 votes immediately following the Nov. 4 election. The razor-thin margin between the candidates resulted in an automatic recount, which Minnesota state law says is triggered if the margin of victory is less than half of 1%. Before the recount began two weeks ago, Franken managed to gain 510 votes.