http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/34200269.htmlMINNEAPOLIS - Minnesota's largest county has declined a request from Al Franken's Senate campaign to reconsider some disqualified absentee ballots.
Franken trails GOP Sen. Norm Coleman by a little more than 200 votes and the race is headed for a recount starting next week.
Attorney David Lillehaug asked the Hennepin County canvassing board to reconsider 461 absentees that he said had been improperly rejected.
Lillehaug said some of the ballots were disqualified on the grounds that signatures didn't match, or that the voter wasn't properly registered. Lillehaug says the campaign knows at least some of those ballots to be valid.
The general counsel for the Minnesota Republican Party, Matthew Haapoja (HAP'-poy-uh), says that the Franken campaign is trying to find more votes where there are none.
Board members said the ballots could be dealt with during the upcoming recount.
Hennepin County did approve 84,002 absentees.
The lousy thing about absentee ballots is that people who aren't handrwriting experts get to toss ballots on the theory that the signature on the request form doesn't match the signature on the return envelope.
Only someone who lived at that address would have access to the ballot under ordinary circumstances.
And if a woman requested an absentee ballot in the name of her non-political husband to fraudulently vote for him, and signed the request form and the return envelope, then the signatures would match.
So the act of testing if the signatures match does more to disqualify real voters then to provide security.
At very least, they should give give someone whose signature supposedly doesn't match a chance to come in after the election and prove his identity.