Minnesota Public Radio reports that a major breakthrough has taken place in the ongoing fight over wrongly-rejected absentee ballots in the Senate recount, which could potentially have a big impact on who wins -- or perhaps not.

The campaigns have submitted a plan to the state Supreme Court, in compliance with the court's very muddled opinion from last week, laying out a framework under which the two campaigns would come to an agreement about whether particular ballots were rejected fairly or unfairly, and then send them to the Secretary of State to be counted. In other words, the campaigns both have to consent to forwarding any single absentee ballot on to the Secretary of State, based on how they look on the outside and without knowing who the vote is for -- though they could probably infer a few things based on what part of the state the ballot is from.

And there's one more catch: The agreement would continue into the first week of January, even though the court called for a plan that would conclude in December.

It's still unclear exactly how many votes can actually be counted under a regime in which either campaign has veto power over the opening of a ballot envelope. Basic game theory would predict that both players deny any permission for ballots from the other's strongholds, and barely any votes are counted by the time it's over. And there's the other factor that at least at the moment, Coleman would seem to have a much greater need for more votes to be counted than Franken, whose lead is pegged right now at 47 votes, while at the same time the total pool of rejected absentees is believed to favor Al.

This might just be the peculiar genius of the court's decision: They have enshrined the principle that votes should be counted, but have also set up a system for this one instance in which nothing actually gets done.