Koochiching completes retally

With just a fifth of the state’s precincts left to go in Minnesota’s Senate recount, supporters of Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman remain in the hunt for ballots that could tip the balance to their candidate.
Tensions rose on Monday at sites where ballots were getting a second look, with the campaigns each accusing the other of running up the challenges.
In Koochiching County, each of the 6,833 ballots cast were reviewed by hand Monday. International Falls Deputy Administrator Betty Bergstrom, two election judges and county Auditor Bob Peterson took part in the recount that started at 9 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m.
Thirty-seven ballots were challenged: 20 by the Franken campaign and 17 by the Coleman campaign, said Peterson.
“Frankly, I thought some of the challenges were very frivolous,” he said.
Representatives of Coleman and Franken campaigns looked at every ballot — front and back. They are not allowed to physically touch the ballots, Peterson noted.
“Betty did the flipping and sorting in all precincts, with representatives of the campaign looking over her shoulder,” Peterson said.
Peterson was in charge of staging the ballots for the recount and transferring them from the vault to the boardroom at the Koochiching County Courthouse.
The challenged ballots and four copies of each of those ballots will be Express mailed to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, where they will be considered by the state Canvassing Board.
“As we speak, Shelly (Johnson, Auditor’s Office employee) is entering this into the computers and getting the packages ready to ship off to the Secretary of State,” Peterson said at about 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Meanwhile, each county will be reimbursed for the recount effort at 3-cents per recounted ballot, said Peterson. For Koochiching, that equals $205.
Peterson said the recount was a learning experience. “We’ve never been through a recount at that stage,” he said. “We did the recount at the primary, but there were no observers, so we zipped right through. But there are four and a half more ballots this time, too.”
In Ramsey County, volunteers for both Franken and Coleman were flagging ballots with hard-to-find stray pen marks for review by the state Canvassing Board. County Elections Manager Joe Mansky had to flip a few of them over more than once just to find the offending mark.
‘‘We just had some people who were inclined to challenge just about everything,’’ Mansky said.
Coleman led Franken by 215 votes before the recount. Through Monday, the margin was 172, a comparison made possible because counties are reporting recount numbers that compare directly with their precincts’ Nov. 4 results. However, those numbers are expected to shift daily until the counties complete their work. And the final outcome will likely rest on the 2,801 ballot challenges filed by the two campaigns, due to be taken up by the Canvassing Board Dec. 16.
Meanwhile, Franken’s campaign sounded alarms over discrepancies in the number of ballots that registered on Nov. 4 versus the number tallied during the recount. They sought the Secretary of State’s help in investigating reports of ‘‘missing’’ ballots.
‘‘For a hand count of ballots to be accurate, all ballots counted must be made available for review,’’ Franken attorney David Lillehaug said in a letter to Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.
Lillehaug continued, ‘‘In an election this close, and with accuracy and transparency paramount, these differences are a serious matter.’’
Franken’s campaign offered examples of precincts from across Minnesota where the overall number of votes reported cast on Election Day didn’t correspond with the number of ballots produced for the recount. In Oak Park Heights, for instance, one precinct showed 1,462 votes on Nov. 4, but only 1,449 during the recount.
In some places, election officials have said the mismatched figures were the result of a faulty machine reading on Election Day that led to some ballots being fed through twice. Others located ballots in storage areas.
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said his office was reviewing Franken’s letter but had not yet had a chance to consider all the implications.
Coleman’s campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said last week that the senator’s advisers were also monitoring reports of the new precinct counts not matching up with voting machine tapes.
As of Monday evening, 2.1 million of nearly 2.9 million ballots had been recounted and 64 of 87 counties were done.
According to figures counties have reported to the state, Franken has fared better than Coleman in the early stages of the recount.
It’s difficult to say exactly where the race stands because both campaigns have challenged hundreds of ballots. Unless the campaigns withdraw their challenges, they will be decided by the Canvassing Board.

If anything, the fervor of challenges is rising.
Stearns County Auditor-Treasurer Randy Schreifels said he’s grown frustrated by frivolous challenges that are slowing the process. He said voter intent was clear on most of them.
‘‘This morning, for example, a ballot was challenged because the oval wasn’t completely blackened, although the majority of it was filled in,’’ Schreifels said Monday in a news release. ‘‘Another ballot was challenged because there was a mark, or a small line, somewhere else on the ballot, not even near the U.S. Senate race.’’
In Ramsey County, Mansky said he expects the recount to wrap up by Dec. 2 or 3, but it depends on how much time is taken up with challenges. That said, counters finished reviewing ballots in St. Paul, the state’s second-largest city. Franken gained 34 votes on Coleman, but more than three times as many ballots were challenged, 63 by Franken monitors, 68 by Coleman observers.
Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak blamed Franken’s volunteers for increasing the pace of challenges to make the race appear closer. Challenges can take would-be votes off the board for the candidates until they are withdrawn or overruled.
‘‘We call this on their part, a strategy of deceptive deflation,’’ Knaak said. ‘‘In other words, they’re trying to deflate the actual numbers on the Coleman side by increasing the number of challenges.’’
Franken lawyer Marc Elias disputed the claim.
‘‘He’s got a fancy phrase which I can’t match. But he’s wrong,’’ Elias said, adding, ‘‘There is no benefit to us to have ballots go before the canvass board that are clearly nonmeritorious challenges. Ultimately, the canvassing board is going to decide what the count is.’’

The Associated Press contributed to this report.