Coleman’s Latest Vote-Count Setback Could Be Fodder for Appeal

By Emily Cadei,
CQ Staff

Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman was dealt another setback Wednesday in his legal efforts to overturn a state-certified recount in his 2008 U.S. Senate contest, which shows him losing his re-election bid to Democratic challenger Al Franken by 225 votes.

The ruling on an absentee ballot-counting issue by a three-judge Minnesota court panel — which is presiding over the dispute that has delayed a final result in an election held almost four months ago — could give Coleman material for a future appeal to the federal courts.

The court unanimously denied Coleman’s request, made Monday, asking the court to reconsider an order it issued last week involving absentee ballots that had been rejected for technical reasons. The order eliminated at least 13 of 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots from consideration in the trial.

Coleman’s lawsuit hinges on reconsidering as many as 5,500 absentee ballots it says were wrongly rejected. The court’s decision last week whittled that number to approximately 3,500.

(More here.)