Democratic officials say that a manual inspection of such ballots will reveal the intent of the voters in case a piece of the ballot is still clinging to the punched hole.
We seldom approve of such ballot-box budgeting.
In dismissing the case, though, Justice Platkin said Mr. Snyder's suit, filed on Oct. 1, had come after the statute of limitations for such ballot-language challenges had passed.
Still, this benefit of the doubt was given to such ballots more than three times as often in counties carried by Mr. Bush, according to the Times database.
While Bush counties accepted 70 of 109 ballots that arrived without postmarks within two days of the election, Gore counties accepted 17 of 63 such ballots.
Already, during the recount, representatives from the Franken campaign argued that some absentee ballots had been improperly rejected; ultimately, more than 900 of such absentee ballots were opened and counted, under a process laid out by the State Supreme Court.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 mandated that such ballots be given to every voter in a federal election who shows up at the polls but doesn't seem to be listed on the voting rolls.
Both candidates had said they would avoid soliciting such ballots because of the possibility of abuse.
The Third Precinct, made up largely of African-Americans and Haitians, had only seven such ballots, or 0.6percentt of their total ballots, county officials said.
Republicans had accused the Democrats of seeking to knock out such ballots because they lacked postmarks or other requirements.
