According to the Star Tribune website, as of this posting, with 99% of precincts recounted and only 2 counties left to finish, Al Franken trails Norm Coleman by 316 votes. The Franken campaign, as they have throughout this process, calls bullshit.

Via e-mail:

I wanted to share the latest news on the recount here in Minnesota: Our latest internal report has Al Franken leading Norm Coleman by 10 votes with some 56,000 ballots left to be included in the hand count.

Now, that number is going to change between now and the end of the recount - but we're confident that when all the votes have been counted, Al Franken will be the next Senator from Minnesota.

But ensuring that every vote is counted will require constant vigilance and a tough stance from our campaign. Already, we've seen ballots going missing, absentee votes improperly rejected, and the Coleman campaign attempting to game the system by challenging hundreds of extra ballots (which, by the way, is the reason some published reports falsely suggest Coleman is leading by several hundred votes).

The Franken campaign has done an excellent job of bringing some perspective to the reported recount numbers, in large part to counter Coleman's desired narrative that he's been ahead the whole time. If Franken is found to be the victor once the canvassing board rules on all the challenged ballots, Coleman wants to be able to call foul, claiming the board reversed the will of the people. This makes that more difficult.

One problem with this lead of 10 votes though: it doesn't take into account a whopping 133 ballots, which have apparently gone missing between the original count on election night and the recount. Those ballots are from Franken-friendly Minneapolis and favor Franken by a net of 46 votes.

From TPM:

The big catch, however, is that the campaign is not including the loss from those missing ballots in their tally for now, while election officials keep the recount in that precinct officially open in order to figure out what is going on. If that apparent loss is not undone, Al would suddenly be down by 36 votes under the campaign's counting method.

As of yesterday, the prevailing theory of the missing ballots was that they had actually been double counted on election night and so weren't actually missing at all. That theory appears to be breaking down. The Uptake counts the ballots:

1,047 voters signed in on the roster.
932 additional voters registered in person on Election Day.
35 absentee ballots were accepted in this precinct by the city.
15 absentee ballots were accepted in this precinct by the county.
TOTAL: 2,029 voters cast legal ballots (2,028 votes are recorded on the machine tape).
TODAY: 1,896 ballots were included in the recount.

The upshot, per Nate:

That is, a total of 2,029 voters either signed in on the registered voter roster in this precinct, registered in person on Election Day (Minnesota is one of the few states that allows you to do this), or sent in absentee ballots. This closely matches the 2,028 votes recorded in the precinct's November 4 count, but does not so closely match the 1,896 ballots that were identified in the recount today.

It looks more likely than not that 133 ballots have in fact gone missing; I have no idea what happens if they cannot be found.

This is a potential disaster in the making for Franken. In a race this close, the loss of 46 votes that those missing ballots represent could be the determining factor, which probably means this is even more likely to be taken to the courts and potentially even to the US Senate. Let's help Al stick through to the end over at the Road To 60 ActBlue page.