Board rules against Franken on ballots

ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 26 (UPI) -- The Minnesota State Canvassing Board says rejected absentee ballots shouldn't be included in the recount for the state's hotly contested U.S. Senate race.

The campaign of Democratic candidate Al Franken had asked the five-member panel to include the disqualified absentee ballots as Republican incumbent Norm Coleman continued to hold a slim 283-vote lead with 81 percent of the recount completed, the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis reported Wednesday.

"We are not going to appeal," Franken attorney Marc Elias told reporters in a conference call.

The canvassing board, chaired by Democratic Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, stressed, however, that it wasn't rejecting the legal merits of Franken's request, saying it's likely the absentee ballot issue will ultimately be decided by the courts.

The canvassing board is also facing the task of ruling on more than 3,600 contested ballots cast on Nov. 4. Ritchie told the Star Tribune that attorneys from each campaign have vowed to find ways to trim the pile.

Coleman senior counsel Fritz Knaak, in a fax to the Franken campaign Tuesday that, agreed that partisan recount observers were being probably being too aggressive in challenging ballots "in a mounting game of ballot challenging that serves no useful purpose," the newspaper reported.