By Emily Cadei, CQ Staff

The discovery of uncounted and missing ballots has complicated the final days of the recount in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election, the closest Senate race this year.

With just a day left of counting, the campaigns for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken found themselves in a tussle with state election officials over 171 uncounted ballots that were discovered in a precinct in Ramsey County, and the search for another 133 ballots that appear to have gone missing in a precinct in Minneapolis. Both areas are Democratic-leaning.

The Franken campaign cheered the discovery and counting of the Ramsey County votes earlier this week. That was followed by a terse statement today on the situation in Minneapolis, in which lead attorney Marc Elias said, “We won’t stand for the disenfranchisement of 133 Minnesota voters, and neither will the people of this state,” and demanded that election officials “find the ballots.”

The Coleman campaign has pushed back, warning the state against jumping to conclusions on both the ballots that been found and those alleged to have gone missing, arguing tabulation errors may be the cause of the discrepancies.

On Thursday, the Secretary of State’s office issued a release announcing it would help with an investigation into the latter case.

“Minneapolis has pledged to make every effort to reconcile the apparent discrepancy between the number of individuals who voted in the precinct and the number of ballots currently on hand,” it read. “This office agreed to . . . [the] request to provide a witness because the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State is committed to the accurate accounting of votes in the U.S. Senate race recount.”

The recount was triggered after an unofficial tally of election returns from Nov. 4 showed Coleman leading Franken by just 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.

Final tallies are due from the counties to the secretary of state’s office by close of business today. However, the Franken campaign has called on officials Minneapolis investigation could keep the recount open past the deadline for that part of the state.

Where the Race Stands

The brunt of the counting is now completed — as of 8 p.m. Thursday night, 99 percent of the ballots had been recounted. Coleman led Franken by 205 votes, a net loss of 10 votes compared to the unofficial tally from Nov. 4.

Several factors cloud that count, however. In addition to the lost and found ballots that have been the subject of so much attention this week, there also are the issues of challenged votes and rejected absentee ballots. In both cases, the decision on how to handle those votes will fall to Minnesota’s canvassing board, which is composed of four state judges and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

The two campaigns have now challenged a total of 6,508 ballots over the course of the recount, 3,311 by the Coleman campaign and 3,197 by the Franken camp. The canvassing board will begin reviewing those challenges Dec. 16.

The majority of the challenges are assumed to be frivolous and are expected to be discarded. In anticipation of this, both campaigns have pledged to withdraw a significant chunk of them ahead of that date — thus far Coleman has withdrawn 650 and Franken has taken back 633.