MN-Sen, Coleman retracts comments

http://www.startribune.com/pol…

Earlier Friday, during an energy-related visit to Wright County, Coleman expressed second thoughts about a statement he made the morning after the Nov. 4 election.

Asked whether he would concede the race if the Canvassing Board certified Franken as the winner — as Coleman had suggested that Franken should do that post-election morning — the senator noted that at the time his 700-plus-vote lead over Franken was more substantial and that he hadn’t slept in 36 hours. Now, he said, “I don’t think I’d have made the same statement.”

Hilarious.

It’s Day 4 and apparently Coleman’s lead is down to 115 with 64% counted. There are over 1600 questioned ballots (pretty evenly distributed amongst Coleman and Franken), so that’s what it is going to come down to. Also, since the precincts counted have been redder than the actual results, we most likely have more than the 56 ballots that you could extrapolate from the data (it’s really hard to extrapolate because the of issue of questioned ballots).

Some of the questioned ballots seem to be frivolous and will almost certainly be decided quickly:

Coleman officials taped 51 ballots challenged by Franken officials on a wall and podium and labeled them “Franken’s Frivolous Follies.” Most the ballots were from Meeker County and marked with an X rather than a filled-in oval.

…

For their part, Franken officials showed a series of ballots challenged by the Coleman camp that showed a vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and either a vote for Franken or no one for senator. “Now, that’s silly,” Elias said.

Since the number of questioned ballots are nearly the same, and it looks the results might close around Coleman+50, it’s going to come down to who is making the less frivolous challenges.