Minnesota voters

For a month, the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken has been hung up by several thousand voters who apparently weren't content to color inside the lines, offering instead X's, underlines, blotches and at least one smiley face on their ballots.

On Friday, the ovals struck again.

Recount officials accepted the ballot of a voter in Rochester, Minn., who filled in the oval — and a big chunk of the area nearby — for Franken.

It was enough to push the former "Saturday Night Live" writer into the lead for the first time — and send election watchers rolling their eyes over the unpredictable kookiness of it all.

"What's so hard in figuring out how to fill in the dot?" said David Schultz, an election law professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn. "It's not that tough."

http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_11275954

Ok... of my Rochester, MN friends - you Liberals you! - which one of you marked your ballot this way?

I don't know... from mine and others view: Minnesota 2008 = Florida 2000. The lawyers and judges are going to determine this election too. You know, if this keeps up, I'm not going to tell people that I used to live in Minnesota.

By the way, I've worked as an election judge here in Montana the past few elections. We have large signs all over and in each the polling booth showing voters how to mark their ballots correctly by filling in the ovals completely. We haven't had any problems. Does Minnesota not have instructions or are their voters just as hopeless as the Florida voters were in 2000? Or should I qualify "Minnesota voters" as instead "Minnesota Franken voters" as Franken has gotten the lead now that these oddly marked ballots are being counted?