In a huge boost to Al Franken's Senate hopes, the Minnesota canvassing board has ruled just this morning to restore the original election night count of the 133 missing ballots from a Minneapolis precinct and that absentee ballots that were rejected due to clerical error (as opposed to voter error) should be included in the recount.

The former decision is important because it means that Franken will avoid a loss of 46 votes but it's the the absentee ballot decision that is the real victory for Franken. It's estimated that there may be between 1-2k absentee ballots that were improperly rejected. These votes were never counted in the original election night tally and it's likely that once counted, they will go for Franken by a large margin. It should be noted, however, that the canvassing board is merely requesting that the County election officials throughout the state count these ballots, they do not have the authority to demand it.

From The Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Moments later, the five-member state Canvassing Board voted unanimously to ask election officials in all 87 counties to count the improperly rejected ballots. However, the board members stressed that they only have the authority to make a recommendation.

The board was told this morning that 49 counties have examined 4,823 rejected absentee ballots and 638 of those were determined by local officials to have been wrongfully rejected.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann also reported that if that trend holds -- with more than 13 percent of the rejected absentee ballots tossed improperly -- there would end up being nearly 1,600 wrongfully set aside.

Eric Kleefeld is optimistic that if all of these ballots are indeed added to the count, that Franken will likely come out the victor.

...it seems very likely that the vast majority of these ballots will be counted before this is over -- and it could possibly seal the deal for Franken. Pre-election polling showed him winning the overall pool of absentee ballots by a solid margin, so it seems pretty reasonable to assume that the newly-counted votes will break for Al. If that proves to be correct -- and if Norm Coleman is unable to stop it through further litigation -- Franken will probably pull ahead of Coleman and win the election.

Certainly mathematically this appears to be the case but who knows what litigation Team Coleman has up their sleeves and what twists and turns this recount has yet to take.

Next up, the canvassing board meets Tuesday to begin reviewing the campaigns' challenged ballots. As of right now, between the two campaigns, 4,472 ballots have been challenged. The canvassing board is hoping that both campaigns will withdraw thousands more frivolously challenged ballots in the hope of cutting down on the time it will take to review them (as a point of reference, they anticipate the review of 1,000 or so challenged ballots will take 4 days.)

Update [2008-12-12 13:16:27 by Todd Beeton]:Via e-mail from the Franken campaign:

This is a huge win for us, because our position has always been the simple principle that every lawful vote should be counted. But there are still a lot of steps left ahead in this process, and the Coleman campaign is likely to bring a whole lot of political and legal muscle to re-double their efforts to stop the count.

We won't let them - but we need your help. Your contribution of $25, $50, $100, or more will enable us to stand up for voters who did everything right but whose ballots were improperly thrown out.

You know what to do.