Al Franken -Norm Coleman race down to 236 votes

KARE in St Paul- Minneapolis reported today that the race between Franken and Coleman has tightened as the recount goes on:

A typo in Pine County got fixed Thursday, giving Al Franken 100 more votes and tightening Minnesota's unresolved Senate race even tighter.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over Democrat Al Franken stood at 236 votes Thursday night.

With nearly 2.9 million ballots cast, the difference between the top two candidates is about one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

Dang. But wait, there's more...

KARE 11 News has also learned Ramsey County found 55 absentee ballots which arrived on time to be counted on election day, but which were not. Those results have now been included in the new totals.

In northeastern Minnesota, the town of Buhl's ballots had been cast but not counted in statewide totals. It turns out election officials there counted the votes but never called them in.

St. Louis County Director of Elections Paul Tynjala said officials tried to call Buhl for the results, but everyone had already gone home. He calls the incident a "goof-up" in which someone thought someone else had already called in the votes.

Buhl finally reported its results at 8 a.m. Wednesday. And the results still didn't clarify the winner between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.

Mary Markas, one of Buhl's election judges, explained what happened. She said local election workers had just begun counting ballots Tuesday when the announcement was made that Barack Obama had won.

"The hand counting had just started and they already announced Obama was president and that's kind of demoralizing," she said. "We felt bad about that because we wondered if our votes even counted."

Nonetheless, Markas said the Buhl votes were counted. She and others called a few media outlets and a couple of candidates with the results. Then they went home, without phoning the results into the county, which passes them to the state.