holiday-hourglass.thumbnail.JPGWell, well, well.  After spending the past six weeks throwing up all sorts of roadblocks to the recount, Coleman’s grudgingly starting to get with the program:  Today, he and Franken — far quicker than I thought they would — agreed on a standard for county boards to use to review the wrongly rejected "fifth pile" absentee ballots (though the "standard" is something Coleman’s side can game readily, as it relies on both campaigns agreeing that a particular ballot was wrongly rejected before it can be counted). 

The Minnesota Supreme Court also moved to protect the privacy of absentee voters. They haven’t ruled yet on Coleman’s "duplicate votes" argument, though they sounded skeptical about it when that argument was advanced by Coleman lawyer Roger Magnuson (not to be confused with state supreme court judge Eric Magnuson, who has recused himself from the court due to his involvement in the state canvassing board — can you tell these are all Scandihoovians here?).  [UPDATE, 2:58 pm CT:  The Soops just ruled against Coleman on this, as expected.  And they did so unanimously.]

There’s going to be a delay in counting until after the holidays, as the county and state elections officials obviously have lives and families that have been put on hold for the recount, and they need to take the holidays off to regroup and recharge after six nonstop weeks of ballot wrangling and legal maneuverings.  The State Canvassing Board will reconvene on December 30, and the county boards have until January 4 to get the "fifth pile" ballots reviewed and counted.  (Mark Ritchie describes what’s coming in this news conference from yesterday.)  But everything is now on track for a winner to be certified in the first or second week of January.   Norm Coleman’s legal bag of tricks has been pretty much exhausted now, and his efforts to justify a possible crybaby Senate Republican blocking of a Franken swearing-in aren’t going to stand up, as Mark Ritchie has painstakingly made sure that the recount has counted every vote possible in a fair and honest manner.

Harry Reid’s not worried:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office told Minnesota Public Radio News that it’s perfectly acceptable for the Senate to seat the winner of Minnesota’s race after Minnesota certifies a victor. Reid’s office also said the Senate would be unlikely to declare a vacancy while Minnesota sorts out who won. Without an official vacancy, Governor Tim Pawlenty could not appoint an interim Senator.

Take that, Smilin’ Tim!