Senate recount trial, day 12

• The judges ruled that 23 ballots from voters who had filed their own lawsuit can be opened and counted. Lawyers on both sides said they were pleased. The votes involved are believed to be for Franken, whose team also praised the judges' close adherence to legal rules on absentee ballots. But Coleman lawyers were encouraged by the judges' apparent willingness to count ballots where voters made innocent errors -- a common occurrence, they say, among the ballots Coleman hopes eventually to see admitted.

• The judges also ordered the parties to submit arguments on whether each of 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots should be further considered or set aside. The move is an apparent effort to streamline the trial process by eliminating some types of disputed ballots from further consideration.

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