They don’t get any closer than this. With millions of votes cast, Republican Norm Coleman now holds a 5 vote lead over Al Franken in the race for U.S. Senate.

Elections officials are reviewing hundreds of ballots that are in dispute, because the voter failed to correctly follow the directions on the ballot. Instead of filling in the oval, they put a check mark. Or they wrote in a Hollywood actor’s name AND voted for one of the real candidates. One of the Twin Cities papers the Star-Tribune is posting the disputed ballots online. Readers can see how the elections board ruled and they can vote on whether or not the ballot should have been counted. In this ballot, for example, somebody apparently thought it would be funny to write in Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame. The voter did not fill in the oval next to the written-in actor’s name, which makes me think the write-in was meant to be a joke. Instead, the voter filled in the oval next to Al Franken’s name. But because there was doubt, at least in the board’s mind, about the voter’s intent, the ballot was tossed out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.