I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. Franken is very likely to win this, because we’ve seen it happen before. The Democrats will keep recounting until they find enough votes. Then, as soon as they take the lead, all interest in further recounts will vanish.
It sounds like Minnesota’s ballots are similar to the ones in my state where we use a marker to fill in an arrow to the candidate of our choice. Imagine how easy it would be to do just that on those ballots that left the senate race blank. All it would take is about 15 mins and one person could create the votes necessary to put Franken over the top.
I consider this seat gone.
That’s exactly what will happen if there are that many blank ballots where people didn’t vote on the Senate race.
They will fill it in for Franken.
I think it should not be a suspect ballot if a person didn’t vote for a particular office. You don’t have to vote on everything on the ballot if you don’t want to. Some people go in there, just vote for president, and leave. I hope they don’t turn this into a hanging chad type of thing, where they say they have to “judge the intent of the voter” and all that Florida nonsense. Either they properly marked their ballot or they didn’t. If they didn’t then there’s no vote for that office. It should be simple to resolve.