It’s been two years of the most expensive U.S. Senate race in the country, three weeks of painstaking recounting of votes, days of mounting tension over challenged ballots and, at the last minute, 133 missing ballots.

And only one thing is clear: We still don’t know who Minnesota’s senator is. The largest recount in state history is over, but the task of determining a winner has barely begun.

What? You thought the recount would decide it?

If Republican Sen. Norm Coleman or Democratic challenger Al Franken hopes to be sworn in on time Jan. 6 — and the odds of that dwindle as the recount drags on — he will first have to go through a five-member state canvassing board charged with determining voter intent on potentially thousands of challenged ballots.

Even after that process begins Dec. 16 — Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has given the board three days, though most believe it will take much longer — the candidates are likely to find themselves careening through the halls of justice and possibly the corridors of power in the very body where they hope to be seated: the U.S. Senate.

In other words, it could be a while.

“This is a long process with many steps in it,” Franken spokesman Andy Barr said. “We’re about to end this phase and move to another phase.”

How many phases remain is unknown. If the recount follows the course of other recounts and lands in court, it’s hard to tell how long it could be before a winner is declared.

The campaigns appear to be gearing up for a long fight, with each actively raising money.

Campaign spokesman Mark Drake said Coleman has raised $1.8 million since Election Day, and the Republican Party of Minnesota also is raising cash. Franken’s camp said it has raised $2.1 million, a figure that includes a DFL recount fund.

Each is overseeing legions of volunteers and lawyers who have fanned out across the state to monitor the tiniest details of the recount process.

“I think Minnesotans recognize that this is history,” Drake said. “This is significant. It really does matter. People are very willing to take time off from work and their families to work on this.”

THE NEXT SORT IS MONDAY

After Coleman started the recount with a 215-vote lead, Franken was able to whittle that number to 192.

But the number means little because of 6,655 challenged ballots not included in the 2.9 million recounted. The campaigns have withdrawn nearly 1,300 of those challenges, with more expected before the canvassing board, made up of Ritchie and four jurists, takes up the matter.

Nor do the numbers include Minneapolis’ Ward 3, Precinct 1, where one envelope containing 133 ballots disappeared last week, resulting in a hunt that has proved fruitless.

That was one of the major snafus in a sometimes-tense process that by and large went smoothly. Another was when Ramsey County located 171 ballots not counted on Election Day, resulting in a net gain of 37 votes for Franken.

The next phase in the recount begins Monday, when counties begin separating rejected absentee ballots into five stacks — those rejected for one of the four reasons spelled out in state law and a fifth pile that could include improperly rejected absentee votes.

The state canvassing board will debate what to do with that fifth pile when it meets Friday, but some counties won’t finish sorting the rejected absentees until Dec. 17 or later.

STATE HAS A PRECEDENT

So what happens once the canvassing board finishes its work?

With all the issues the campaigns raised about ballots — not all of which may be under the canvassing board’s authority — many observers think the recount is headed to court.

Is it?

“I think, unfortunately, yes,” said Edward Foley, director of the election law program at Ohio State University.

The campaigns are careful to avoid talk of court but neither has ruled it out.

Last week, Coleman recount attorney Fritz Knaak suggested the Franken campaign should pledge to stay out of court. But when asked, Knaak wouldn’t make a similar pledge if it should turn out Coleman is not ahead once the canvassing board certifies that race.

“We haven’t considered that,” Knaak said. “And that’s the truth. … Our posture and legal posture and our preparation has all been in anticipation of defensive moves, if necessary, in the event there’s a (legal) challenge by the Franken campaign.”

The Franken campaign won’t say whether it thinks court is inevitable.

“We have been very, very consistent in our unwillingness to speculate,” Barr said.

If that were to happen, Foley suggested the state follow its own precedent from the disputed 1962 gubernatorial recount between Karl Rolvaag and Elmer Andersen. After early Minnesota Supreme Court rulings fell along party lines, the two candidates agreed to a jointly chosen panel of judges.

With the current state Supreme Court devoid of Democratic-Farmer-Labor appointees, a bipartisan panel might help voters and the candidates accept any rulings. Furthermore, it could minimize the possibility of U.S. Senate involvement, which has ultimate authority over its membership, Foley said.

“If Minnesota replicates the fair process used in ’62 — if the court that resolves this dispute is seen as fair to both sides — I think it would be hard for the Senate to unilaterally undo the work that was done by that Minnesota body,” Foley said.

That possibility has been speculated on since the early stages of the recount. It rose to the forefront after comments by lead Franken attorney Marc Elias and was followed by a round of jawboning by Senate leaders.

SENATE COULD JUMP IN

If the past is any guide, Senate involvement means anything but a quick resolution.

Following an excruciatingly close 1974 New Hampshire race, the Senate took up the election in an effort to determine the winner, delving into 3,500 disputed ballots, weighing affidavits from voters and investigating issues such as ballot security.

It dragged on for months. Finally, in May 1975, a deadlocked Committee on Rules and Administration asked the full Senate to get involved.

“The consideration of individual ballots alone has entailed a total of 656 Committee roll-call votes, perhaps an unprecedented number by any committee on any assignment in the history of the Senate,” the committee’s report read.

The full Senate was no help, and the two candidates eventually decided to hold a new election — 10 months after the original vote.

EVERY MISTAKE IS MAGNIFIED

As the recount drags on and the rhetoric heats up, as online message boards light up with allegations that the fix is in, one way or the other, the question emerges of whether voters will accept the result.

Charles Seife, a journalism professor at New York University who traveled to Minnesota to observe the recount, said he doubts the hand counting is ever going to result in a clear winner. He has called Minnesota’s recount “doomed.”

Why? With the race so tight, every mistake is magnified — and there are mistakes aplenty.

In one recounted Mankato precinct, Seife pointed out, ballot counters listed 15 “other” ballots, or ballots that weren’t for Coleman or Franken. Yet according to Election Day totals, Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley garnered 142 votes in that precinct.

Seife also noted that several precincts have been hand-counted twice — once during a customary audit of selected precincts across the state and once during the actual recount. In some of those precincts, such as St. Paul’s Ward 3, Precinct 5, or Becker County’s Sauk Rapids Precinct 4, the two hand recounts came to different conclusions, even though there were no challenges.

That means one of the two hand recounts was wrong. And in a race this close, that’s crucial, Seife said.

“With an error rate this high, you count it one day, Coleman wins. You count it another day, Franken wins,” Seife said.

“I think there’s many ways this can end, and however it ends, I think people are going to be unsatisfied.”

WASHINGTON RECOUNT WENT TO COURT

For all the controversy, there is little happening in Minnesota that other states haven’t seen before.

The similarities between the Minnesota recount and, for example, one held in the state of Washington for its 2004 gubernatorial race are disarming. Both were statewide hand recounts, with close to 3 million ballots cast and candidates separated by a razor-thin margin.

At this point in Washington’s recount, things were also relatively calm. It wasn’t until after the state recount concluded and the race landed in court that things flew off the rails.

The attending lawsuits alleged everything from dead voters to fabricated ballots. Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire was certified the winner and sworn in even as lawyers continued to battle it out.

The wrangling continued until June 2005 — seven months after voters cast their ballots — when a strongly worded judicial ruling ended Republican hopes.

But the process also provided guideposts for issues that have emerged in the Minnesota recount.

For example, the Washington Supreme Court ruled elections officials could revisit ballot consideration decisions, allowing more than 700 absentee votes to be recounted after they were mistakenly identified as having mismatched signatures. Franken has raised that very issue.

And six weeks after Election Day, Washington elections officials also decided to open a warehouse in that state’s largest county to look for 162 missing ballots.

Hennepin County officials made a similar decision this week. But unlike in Washington, they found nothing.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger contributed to this report.