It's a big day in Minnesota, as state officials gather at 10 a.m. ET on this fine Saturday morning to sort through about 950 sealed absentee ballots that both campaigns were able to agree were wrongly rejected and should be put into the count. Al Franken is still favored to hold on to some kind of very narrow lead when this ends either today or tomorrow, but anything could happen. A live video feed is available at The Uptake.

Today's proceedings, as explained to us by the Sec. of State's office, will essentially be a fast-forward version of what went on at all the individual precincts during the manual recount: A state election official will open the ballots one by one and allot the votes for Franken, Coleman or none of the above. Representatives of the two campaigns will have the ability to challenge the call on a ballot. Then, the state canvassing board will get together to sort through the challenges, judge how each ballot should be allocated, and give us all a new total.

But even this won't be the end of it. Assuming they have still lost, the Coleman campaign has guaranteed that they will go to court to contest the election under any number of issues that haven't gone their way. This will in turn hold up the seating of Al Franken in the Senate for weeks or possibly months, as the Republican leadership has indicated that they will filibuster against him being seated on any provisional basis.