I would agree, they all look like votes for Franken. I watched about 10 minutes of the ballot reviews this morning, and I did hear one of the panel refer to a set of guidelines they were using to determine if there was an overvote or not.
While I was watching, I did see them rejecting a ballot (challenged by Franken) as an overvote — they couldn’t determine if the X was over or under the filled in circle for Franken. They also rejected one Franken vote where X’s were used everywhere else but there was just a single line in Franken’s bubble. So it looks to me that they were at least trying to get it right.
And with the army of volunteers both candidates employed to watch and review every step of the process from voting through the recount, I doubt there was much chance for fraud. Unlike many of the doomsayers here, I’ve actually been quite impressed by the transparency and fairness of the process. If Coleman loses, it will be tough, but as you say, it will be the fault of those who decided not to vote for him on election day.
I appreciate your rationality. I’ve seen my state’s election process repeatedly disparaged because of this, but I think it actually proves that we do indeed have one of the best systems in the country. It was a close election, so everyone is quick to yell fraud, but I believe that it was this close. We had terrible choices, and a result there was a lot of undervoting in this election. I personally could not bring myself to vote for Coleman due to a mix of personal and political reasons, and I of course couldn’t vote for Franken.