Ballot-counting in the undecided Minnesota Senate race resumed Tuesday after a short holiday reprieve. But the deadlock between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken already appears certain to continue past the Jan. 6 swearing-in date for the 111th Congress — and a new dispute between the combatants threatens to further delay certification of a winner and keep the seat vacant for an additional period of time.

State officials stated Tuesday that Franken holds a razor-thin lead of 50 votes over Coleman out of 2.9 million cast in the Nov. 4 election. That lead is up slightly from 46 votes, as the state canvassing board makes its final allocations of votes based on a hand recount conducted following the initial post-election canvass.

That recount was required because the first count showed Coleman leading by 215 votes, a margin of .007 over Franken. State law mandates a hand recount in any race for federal or statewide office in which the margin in less than one-half of 1 percentage point.

But progress toward a resolution of the year’s closest congressional race is clouded by the back-and-forth between the two campaigns over procedures for counting 1,350 disputed absentee ballots, which have been identified by counties as rejected from the counting so far. The count of these ballots, which is supposed to be the next major step in finalizing the total vote tally, is scheduled to be conducted by state election officials on Jan. 4, this coming Sunday.

The Minnesota Supreme Court last week issued an order to the counties to compile a tally of wrongly rejected absentee ballots, which was agreed to by local election officials and the two candidates’ campaigns. But the process, slated to begin Tuesday and conclude Friday, is deadlocked by disagreements between the campaigns about which ballots are to be deemed improperly rejected, and thus due for re-examination and inclusion in the total vote count.

The Coleman campaign, which initially resisted the inclusion of disputed absentee ballots in the final count, is now arguing for the addition of 645 more absentees it deems wrongly rejected on top of those 1,350 already identified. The Franken campaign has declined to consider that proposal.

An analysis by the Minneapolis Star Tribune shows Franken would benefit from counting the rejected absentee ballots identified by the counties, while the additional ballots proposed by the Coleman campaign come mainly from areas that favored the Republican incumbent in the count so far.

Lacking an agreement between the two campaigns on how to proceed, officials in Anoka County just north of Minneapolis adjourned their scheduled meeting Tuesday morning without reviewing a single rejected absentee ballot. The review slated to occur in northern Minnesota’s St. Louis County, which includes the city of Duluth, also was in limbo.

The Coleman campaign blamed the office of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, for the stalemate. The Coleman campaign accused the office of pro-Franken bias after officials refused to accept Coleman’s list of additional ballots to review, ostensibly because it was not received by the 3 p.m. Monday deadline.

“Our campaign proposed a good-faith agreement that would ensure that more than 1,400 rejected absentee ballots would be reviewed for counting by the canvassing board. But as a result of the Franken campaign’s refusal to put forward a specific proposal and a list — and the deputy secretary of State’s intervention in this process — there is no agreement, and until there is an agreement, no sorting of rejected absentee ballots can take place,” Coleman Communications Director Mark Drake wrote in a memo to reporters issued Tuesday morning.

Despite the current deadlock, Ritchie and attorneys for both campaigns expressed hope that improperly rejected absentee ballots could be reviewed and counted by Jan. 6. They were vague, however, when asked how the current dispute would be settled.

“This entire process  . . .  has had ups and downs and we’ve been very good at keeping on track and keeping moving forward,” Ritchie said. He said he anticipated “a very active discussion” this week, but said he still expected the state canvassing board to receive the wrongly rejected absentee ballots for counting by the weekend, as planned.

The canvassing board — which is in charge of overseeing and certifying state election results — met on Tuesday to resolve a few final discrepancies in its review of ballots that had been challenged during the three-week recount. That resulted in a net gain of four votes for Franken, extending his current lead to a miniscule 50 votes.