By Emily Cadei, CQ Staff

The plot continues to thicken in the undecided Minnesota Senate contest, now entering the second week of a legally mandated recount with Republican incumbent Norm Coleman maintaining a razor-thin lead over Democratic challenger Al Franken.

The state canvassing board on Wednesday denied a request, entered by attorneys for Franken, that it review absentee ballots rejected for technical reasons by local elections officials, and include in the candidates’ vote totals any ballots found to have been wrongly dismissed.

The five-member board ruled unanimously that it does not have the authority to consider the legitimacy of absentee ballots, saying that is a matter for election judges or the courts to decide. This was essentially the position taken by Coleman’s campaign, which opposed the petition by the Franken camp to have the board take charge of the absentee ballots in question.

Yet even though board members did make a tentative attempt to craft guidance for local election officials on how to handle rejected absentee ballots, their action increased the likelihood that the outcome in this year’s closest Senate election will be decided by judicial rulings.

“I just think there’s going to be litigation before we’re all done with this,” said canvassing board member G. Barry Anderson, an associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, echoing the sentiments of many in the room and across the state.

Franken attorney Marc Elias said the campaign was disappointed by the ruling, but would not appeal. When asked about the campaign’s legal options, he said, “I’m not going to take anything off the table  . . .  but we’re going to take this one step at a time and see what the canvassing board does next.”

Before recessing the meeting, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, asked the state Attorney General’s office to review which state official or branch of government has jurisdiction to rule on rejected absentee ballots. He also welcomed input from both campaigns.

The board intends to meet again next week to consider this additional legal advice before issuing any further guidelines on absentee ballots.

It is becoming increasingly evident that some guidance is needed as officials around the state deal with rejected absentee ballots reaching approximately 12,000, 4 percent of the total 288,000 absentee votes cast, according to Ritchie. “We’re talking about a significant number of ballots,” he said at Wednesday’s meeting.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Tuesday that officials in Itasca County, in northern Minnesota, conducted their own review of rejected absentee ballots and announced they would reopen their recount to include three absentee votes they concluded had been wrongly tossed aside.

The inclusion or exclusion of any significant number of ballots clearly could have an impact on the outcome of the race, given how exceedingly close it is. The unofficial count of Nov. 4 election returns showed Coleman leading Franken — a well-known entertainer and longtime Democratic activist — by 215 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, a margin of .007 percent. Minnesota law requires a hand recount in any election for federal or state office in which the margin is less than one-half of 1 percentage point.

The latest tally of recounted ballots, released by state officials Tuesday night, shows Coleman has gained a net of 23 votes, extending his lead to 238 votes. Nearly a fifth of the ballots remained to be re-counted.

Mark Drake, communications director for Coleman’s campaign, expressed confidence in the way the recount was evolving, writing in a release issued Tuesday, “As we anticipated, the dips and peaks that we saw in the first few days of the recount have calmed down and we are seeing solid results confirming Senator Coleman’s lead.”