Editor’s note: Please see the subhead below for the latest update over the absentee ballot dispute.

Minneapolis election officials have suspended the search for 133 ballots from the Nov. 4 election that apparently disappeared from a precinct in the city last week during the height of the recount in the Minnesota senate race between Democrat Al Franken and incumbent Norm Coleman.

The ballots were believed to be missing after election officials in one precinct counted 133 less votes during the recount than the number of votes certified on Election Day. About 2,029 people vote in that Minneapolis precinct on Nov. 4.

An exhaustive three-day search for the ballots, which were in a sealed envelope, began last Wednesday but was unsuccessful. The state canvassing board, the panel that oversaw the recount, will now have to decide whether to use the number of votes tallied from the precinct on Election Day or cite the number of votes election officials counted during the recount when they certify the results later this month.
Franken would gain 46 net votes if the canvassing board uses the votes cast at the precinct on Election Day.

Last week, in a conference call with reporters, Marc Elias, Franken’s lead recount attorney, demanded Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, “Hennepin County, and the City of Minneapolis complete an intensive search.”
 
“The outcome of this election may be at stake. The integrity of the Minnesota electoral process is also at stake,” Elias said. “That doesn’t mean [just] looking around the office. They should conduct a systematic, forensic search of the polling location, any vehicles that were used to transport those ballots and the warehouse where they were stored.”
 
Minneapolis city spokesman Matt Laible said local election officials searched a warehouse where they believed the ballots may have been. They ended their search Monday afternoon and turned over two sets of results-one set from Election Day and the other from the recount, minus 133 ballots-to Ritchie.

“While we are disappointed that the envelope containing 133 missing paper ballots have not been found, we take solace in the fact that the voters of this precinct will still have their votes counted, as the secretary of state has said that the canvassed and audited election night results may stand in the absence of these ballots,” Elias said. 

Ritchie, however, did not say whether the canvassing board will use the election night results although under similar circumstances in past elections that is exactly what state election officials have done.

Coleman’s campaign, meanwhile, took issue with Franken’s assertion that the ballots were missing in the first place.
 
“We’ve maintained from the beginning of this incident that there should be no rush to judgment on what may have happened,” said Coleman campaign press secretary Luke Friedrich. “The decision by a senior member of the Secretary of State’s office, as well as the Secretary of State himself, to insist there are missing ballots when there are any number of other plausible scenarios is disappointing. With today’s news, we would hope further review of these other scenarios would be conducted, rather than just accepting the political spin of the Franken campaign.”
 
The recount in the closely watched contest ended Friday with Coleman leading the former Saturday Night Live Comedian by 687 votes. State election officials tallied 1,208,344 votes for Coleman and 1,207,657 votes for Franken, according to unofficial results posted Friday by Ritchie’s office.
 
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
 
The recount 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.
 
Franken’s campaign, however, asserts that their candidate leads Coleman by 4 votes. Their methodology includes thousands of challenged ballots, where both campaigns claim voter intent is unclear, and the assumption that the votes on those ballots will be upheld by the state canvassing board. Coleman has challenged more ballots than Franken.
 
On Monday, Franken’s campaign withdrew another 425 challenged ballots. Last week, Franken withdrew 633 ballots.
 
“We acknowledge there is no reasonable chance that those ballots will be upheld before the state Canvassing Board,” Elias said.
 
Coleman’s campaign withdrew 650 challenged ballots last week. But there are still nearly 5,000 challenged ballots the canvassing board must contend with.
 
The state canvassing board will meet Dec. 16 to review the remaining challenged ballots and decide voter intent.
 
Absentee Ballot Dispute
 
The board will also meet on Friday to discuss the 1,000 absentee ballots Franken’s campaign said were improperly rejected. Franken’s campaign attorneys have pressed the canvassing board to include 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 sorting of rejected absentee ballots began Monday. The ballots are being sorted into five piles. Four of those piles represent ballots that were rejected for legitimate reasons under state law. A fifth pile will contain ballots that were improperly discarded. 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.
 
Elias 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.”
 
But Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky has balked at having election officials in the county sort through the absentee ballots to determine how many were rejected improperly. He said he consulted with a county attorney and concluded that state law doesn’t require such a move-whether they were wrongfully rejected or not-into separate piles. Mansky said, “We probably need some direction from a court.”

On Sunday, Mansky told the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard that he would not count absentee ballots that were wrongfully rejected nor sort them into a separate pile without a court order.
 
Coleman’s campaign agreed.
 
In a letter sent to Ritchie Friday, Coleman campaign attorney Fritz Knaak said. “We strongly believe that the requested activities, to be undertaken at taxpayer expense, are wholly outside of the jurisdictional scope of an administrative recount but, instead, constitute initial discovery steps in an election contest.”
 
Elias said it appears that a half-dozen or so other counties have consulted with attorneys and have followed suit leaving the Franken campaign “deeply” concerned, Elias said.

“Let me be clear, an absentee ballot that was not rejected for one of the four legal reasons is nothing more than an uncounted ballot,” Elias said during a news conference. “It is deeply concerning that some counties are refusing to determine whether they have uncounted ballots among their previously rejected absentee ballots.”

Still, it appears the senate race is far from over and may end up in litigation.

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. “But we remain confident these votes will be counted.”