Why do the Minnesota Secretary of State and some media organizations report that Norm Coleman is leading?
The short answer is that the totals reported by the Secretary of State don’t include all the votes yet. During the hand recount, thousands of ballots that were “challenged” by either side. This means that one or both campaigns disagree with the determination of how the ballot should be counted made by an impartial election judge during the recount process. All of these challenged ballots were set aside until the state canvassing board begins resolving challenges on Tuesday, December 16. Because these disputes haven’t yet been settled and these ballots haven’t yet been recounted, they aren’t included in the daily totals released by the Secretary of State. Many media outlets report these daily numbers, which do indeed show that that Coleman holds a small lead. However, the Secretary of State’s totals, as reported by the media, don’t include all the votes. Using the raw daily totals assumes that every challenged ballot will be thrown out by the state canvassing board. In fact, experience
