Updated: Norm Coleman’s razor-thin lead over Al Franken keeps getting even tighter. Yesterday, Coleman’s lead was 477 votes, but as of 10:45 a.m. Thursday, it’s now a 438-vote gap. [At 4:15 took a 590-vote lead, but the margin is again back to 336 by 5 pm.] Forum Communications reports one small reason why: Election officials in Buhl, Minn., reportedly went to bed election night without reporting the tallies for its 550 voters to county officials. Also reporting of results in Duluth was delayed because one precinct, “inundated with hundreds of same-day registrations,” took longer to count.
Could the recount shift victory to Franken’s side? Hard to say, but SenateGuru does the math on what that’d take. Answer: Not much.
Franken needs only to pick up one single vote every 8.6 precincts in order to claim the lead. Every 8 or 9 precincts, there just has to be one single ballot overlooked, one single ballot that didn’t scan right.
Vote tallies are literally changing minute to minute. Follow the changes at the Secretary of State’s Office.
Update: David Brauer offers some interesting details. Two of every 1,000 optically scanned votes aren’t counted, he writes: “Extrapolated, that means 6,000 votes could enter the pool this time.”
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