Democrat Is Winner in Recount of Minnesota

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/us/politics/06minnesota.html

Democrat Is Winner in Recount of Minnesota Senate Race
By KIRK JOHNSON
January 5, 2009

ST. PAUL — Al Franken, the comedian who became a Democratic pundit and then a politician, won November’s election for the United States Senate by 225 votes out of 2.9 million cast, according to the finally completed recount results certified on Monday by the state’s independent canvassing board.

But even as the board members were leaving the state office building across the street from the Capitol, Mr. Franken’s opponent, the Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman, said through his lawyers that the board’s work had been flawed and that he would challenge the recount in court.

“This process isn’t at an end — it is now just at the beginning,” said Tony Trimble, a lawyer for Mr. Coleman. “We will contest the results.”

Minnesota residents have probably become somewhat inured to revolving-door news days like this — an advance by one side countered by a bayonet charge from the other, each battling for inches.

But Monday’s certified recount number is a new chapter in the story. Before the board’s certification, the questions were broad: Had the election been conducted properly? Did the system as a whole work? And the geography extended to every county and city.

The Minnesota secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, who is also head of the canvassing board, said he believed good things were revealed about the democratic process in the state. The voting process had worked, Mr. Ritchie said, and while mistakes had been found by some local elections officials in throwing out perfectly good ballots, no evidence turned up of widespread fraud or malfeasance. The recount team had then done a good job retracing the steps of what voters had wanted on Election Day, he said.

“It was as accurate as humanly possible within Minnesota law,” said Mr. Ritchie, a Democrat, referring to the recount. “I believe all lawful votes were counted.”

Mr. Coleman’s lawyers said the lawsuit would focus much more narrowly on batches of absentee votes that the campaign believed were either not recounted or recounted incorrectly. Under Minnesota law, Mr. Coleman has seven calendar days to file a contested election lawsuit, and there are some political experts who think he might change his mind and concede.

Mr. Trimble sounded anything but hesitant, though, and said the papers would be ready within 24 hours, mandating the creation of a three-judge panel to be chosen by the chief justice of the State Supreme Court.

For Mr. Coleman, the former mayor of St. Paul, who was elected to the Senate in 2002, the political calculus of whether to contest the election legally involves both national and state considerations. A contested election could take months to resolve, which might earn him some points with national Republican leaders, even if he failed to overturn the canvassing board’s decision, because it would keep one more Democrat out of the Senate through at least the early days of the Obama administration as immense issues like an economic stimulus and taxes are debated.

Countering that is how much a continued battle could affect his political future within the state — he is 59 years old — if residents simply become fed up and blame him for having only one senator at a crucial moment in history.

And while 225 votes might seem like the narrowest of margins, some political experts say that finding a net shift of that margin in Mr. Coleman’s favor could be a big hill to climb.

“The big issue is where do you net 225?” said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “He needs to factor in that Franken is also likely to pick up votes — the absentees are not going to be only for Coleman.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 6, 2009, on page A15 of the New York edition.