Exit Stage Left for Franken!

“The Minnesota state Canvassing Board today rejected Democrat Al Franken’s request to count absentee ballots his campaign says were wrongly rejected by poll judges.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s team had argued that the board lacks the power to include those ballots in the recount.

At the start of the recount, Coleman had a 215-vote lead out of 2.9 million ballots cast. Through Tuesday night, state figures showed a 238-vote lead when Nov. 4 tallies are compared with new counts in precincts where the recount is done.

That figure does not include the nearly 3,600 challenges that will get sorted out later, meaning the absentee fight could prove critical.

The canvassing board rejected Franken’s request by a vote of 5-0. The board members are Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin and Ramsey County Assistant Chief Judge Edward Cleary.

There were a total of more than 12,000 rejected absentee ballots, or about 5 percent of the roughly 288,000 absentee ballots attempted to be cast, Ritchie said. That 288,000 figure was a state record. “

While it’s not over, and someone may come up with ballots in another car trunk, but this should be pretty much it for Stuart Smalley’s run for the Senate.

Thanks for the comedy Al.