It’s all but official: A professional Democrat clown will join all the amateur ones already in the Senate.

Al Franken is going to Washington:

Democrat Al Franken will be declared the winner of the tight U.S. Senate contest in Minnesota, emerging from a ballot recount with a slim margin over Republican Norm Coleman, state officials said on Sunday.

But Coleman, the incumbent, has asked Minnesota’s supreme court to require that a few hundred additional absentee ballots be included in the recount — and he could then ask the court to investigate the contest all over again.

“At the moment, Franken has a 225-vote lead,” after the weekend counting of what were deemed the last uncounted absentee ballots, said Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat who oversaw the process.

Ritchie said unless the supreme court acts on Coleman’s request and orders more ballots to be counted, he will reconvene the state’s Canvassing Board on Monday to certify Franken as the winner of the November 4 contest.

Remember the voters in Minnesota elected Jesse “The Body” Ventura to a disastrous term as their Governor.

Minnesota deserve who they vote for – what a joke!

Except for 133 missing ballots from Minneapolis, the recounting of votes from the U.S. Senate race is over. According to the Star Tribune’s tabulations, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman has a 192-vote advantage over Democrat Al Franken, pending the resolution of those Minneapolis ballots and of thousands of ballot challenges.

When the recount began, Coleman held a 215-vote edge.

Now comes the hard part – the challenged ballots. The Minnesota Canvassing Boad plans to meet on December the 16th to review the recount and challenged ballots.

Coleman challenged 3,376 and Franken 3,281 ballots.

Stay tuned…….

The recount has started in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race between incumbent Senator Norm Coleman and Democrat challenger Al Franken.

The recount plan has been approved.

In a meeting that lasted less than an hour today, the state Canvassing Board unanimously approved a plan to hand recount, beginning tomorrow morning, nearly 3 million ballots to determine who won the U.S. Senate race between Republican Norm Coleman, the incumbent, and Democrat Al Franken, the challenger.

The five-member panel also unanimously decided to take at least a few days to determine what to do about requests by the Franken campaign to review rejected absentee ballots and count any that were improperly voided.

Coleman leads by such a slim margin that a hand recount is mandatory. Coleman’s unofficial lead is now 215 votes, after results from audits — mini-recounts to determine voting machines’ accuracy — are counted.

The recount is slated to begin tomorrow morning, essentially resetting the race to 0-0, and will last at least though the beginning of December.

Stay tuned……