http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040703476.html?wprss=rss_politics By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 8, 2009; Page A10
Democrat Al Franken yesterday increased his small lead over Republican Norm Coleman in the protracted dispute over the race for a U.S. Senate seat representing Minnesota, but it remains unclear when the five-month legal battle will end.
A state court ordered more than 300 absentee ballots that had previously been excluded to be counted yesterday, and the results increased Franken's lead from 225 votes to 312.
Though the three-judge panel reviewing the election has not finished making all of its rulings, the count will make it virtually impossible for Coleman to move ahead of Franken in this stage.
Lawyers for Coleman, who had held his seat since 2003, have said he will appeal the panel's decisions to the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing that the standards for determining which ballots to count have been inconsistent and that thousands of additional absentee ballots should have been counted.
ad_icon
About 12,000 of the 280,000 absentee ballots were excluded for reasons such as improper voter registration. About 2.9 million people voted in the November election.