The Canvassing Board requested both camps to reduce the number of challenges and Franken's camp is going to reduce their challenges to 500, while the Coleman camp is reducing to 1000 ballots. This should speed up the final decision considerably. Also the AP and Franken camps ballot by ballot analysis appears to give Franken a very slight lead:
As both campaigns reduce challenges, Franken is confident he will pick up hundreds of votes.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/36146949.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUncacyi8cyaiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUThe AP concluded that Franken stands to gain about 200 votes on Coleman, enough to put him ahead, because the unofficial count has Coleman up by about 192 votes as of Sunday.
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Al Franken's campaign on Sunday pledged to reduce the number of ballots it is challenging to fewer than 500 in the U.S. Senate race against GOP Sen. Norm Coleman.
Meanwhile, the Coleman campaign said it will reduce the number of its challenges by more than half, to fewer than 1,000.
Both camps, which between them had questioned more than 6,000 ballots from the Nov. 4 election, said they are reducing challenges after the state Canvassing Board asked them to do so on Friday.
Both men had more than 2,000 active challenges pending, with Franken having more than 2,200. His campaign said that figure would drop to under 500 by Tuesday.
Coleman's campaign had fewer challenges, but also pledged smaller reductions. The incumbent had about 2,000 challenges active; a spokesman said Sunday that that number will drop by more than half, to under 1,000.
Fritz Knaak, a Coleman lawyer, said in a prepared statement that while the campaign still has concerns about the standards used to challenge the ballots, it will nonetheless reduce its challenge numbers.