It seemed like the beginning of the end to Al Franken's lawyers, while attorneys for Norm Coleman saw it as the end of the beginning. In Washington, Senate leaders crossed swords for a continuing duel.
Not long after a decisive majority of once-rejected absentee ballots were counted and broke for Franken on Tuesday, attorneys on both sides were already jawing over the merits of an appeal in the 10-week-old U.S. Senate recount trial.
Coleman spokesman Ben Ginsberg said the three presiding judges erred in permitting only 351 rejected absentee ballots to be counted. "We will be appealing this to the Minnesota Supreme Court," he said.
Franken attorney Marc Elias brushed aside the threat. "I don't think there is much of a case on appeal at all," he said.
The ballots counted Tuesday were ones that the three judges had concluded were wrongly rejected. State Elections Director Gary Poser went through them one by one in court, calling 198 votes for DFLer Franken, 111 for Republican Coleman and 42 for the Independence Party's Dean Barkley or others.
The tally increased Franken's narrow lead from 225 votes to 312, out of 2.9 million votes cast in the November election.
The judges' verdict in the trial could come this week or next and is expected to include all remaining decisions that the court has yet to make. That includes a ruling on Coleman's claims that some ballots in DFL-leaning precincts were counted twice and that officials erred in using an Election Night machine count for a Minneapolis precinct after 132 ballots went missing during the hand recount.
Focus on absentee ballots