The official portion of the Minnesota recount has finished, and now Franken is ahead by 225 votes. Sucks for Republicans when all the votes are counted. Coleman is still trying to fight it, however; on the counting side, he’s asking for more rejected absentee ballots to be counted, but that looks like a Hail Mary play as it’s doubtful that any such ballots would favor him enough to matter. On the legal side, he’s going forward with a full frontal assault in the courts, calling the vote count in favor of Franken an “artificial lead” which must be remedied by whatever legal action they can dream up. And since Minnesota state law precludes an official assignment until all legal battles have been cleared up, and since the Senate Republicans have vowed to fight a battle to the death to prevent Franken from being seated before then, we’re just going to have to wait a while, it seems.

One possible outcome is for Coleman to demand another recount. Not that there’s any reason to doubt the results of the last recount, other than that Coleman didn’t win it. While this would fly in the face of almost a decade of Republican derision of “counting and recounting the votes until you win,” Republicans have never been known for their keen sense of consistency where winning matters. This article does a good job of outlining Coleman’s own twists and turns.

Good thing that Republicans aren’t sore losers.