Coleman Lays Out Appeal Strategy Pending Recount Decision
By Emily Cadei,
CQ Staff
Republican Norm Coleman is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst in his challenge of the Minnesota Senate race outcome.
As the recount trial wrapped up and judges set to begin to deliberations, Coleman’s attorney’s distributed a memo Friday laying out a two-track strategy which they say has the former senator “poised ... to be sworn into the U.S. Senate.”
Coleman, whose first term expired in January, is fighting a recount outcome that put Democratic challenger Al Franken ahead by 225 votes out of 2.9 million cast.
The memo says that Coleman could take the lead if the judges hearing the recount case over the past seven weeks “embrace the Minnesota tradition of enfranchising voters and agree to open and count the wrongly rejected absentee ballots.”
Given the judges’ rulings throughout the trial, many local court watchers deem that unlikely.
(More here.)
CQ Staff
Republican Norm Coleman is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst in his challenge of the Minnesota Senate race outcome.
As the recount trial wrapped up and judges set to begin to deliberations, Coleman’s attorney’s distributed a memo Friday laying out a two-track strategy which they say has the former senator “poised ... to be sworn into the U.S. Senate.”
Coleman, whose first term expired in January, is fighting a recount outcome that put Democratic challenger Al Franken ahead by 225 votes out of 2.9 million cast.
The memo says that Coleman could take the lead if the judges hearing the recount case over the past seven weeks “embrace the Minnesota tradition of enfranchising voters and agree to open and count the wrongly rejected absentee ballots.”
Given the judges’ rulings throughout the trial, many local court watchers deem that unlikely.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
I couldn’t open the CQ link, but here is my assessment.
During Friedberg’s closing he said about Franken’s case "They have proved the viability of a number of ballots to an absolute certainty where there can be no conceivable question but that most of the ballots they put in issue should be opened and counted." In effect, agreeing that the Franken campaign's list of ballots should be counted.
So, Franken had a margin of 225 at the start of the trial. Friedberg has just conceded that 252 ballots should be added. Plus individual voters have sued to have their votes counted and the Election Contest Court has ruled that they should be accepted; therefore the minimum Franken margin is over 500.
Now, let’s look at the Coleman argument.
Let’s give him 46 for the Minneapolis precinct with the lost ballots. [Personally, I agree with Coleman based on the Sparks-Schwab case. It’s a hard standard, and this court has held to past decisions and statutes.]
Add to that the double-counting claim -- caused by possible human errors in labeling the duplicates and originals. Coleman thinks he should have a net gain of 61 votes based on his selected 10 precincts (the most often cited is the Mpls precinct with a 14 vote discrepancy), but he is ignoring there are also many precincts (maybe more than 300) where Coleman won (like White Bear Lake which had a 13 vote discrepancy) and thus potentially that net gain could be much lower.
Then there is the stringent rules applied in Carver County in accepting absentee ballots that could result in no more than 83 votes. {Personally, Coleman argument doesn’t make sense since the County may have contacted the voters to correct the mistake and eventually counted.)
Adding it all up … is less than 200 .. and that assumes the judges agree with him.
So to win, Coleman must hope that the Court agrees to accept 1,359 ballots from Coleman’s spreadsheet. However, considering how many blank cells are listed signifying that the voter wasn't registered; or the voter isn't currently in the Statewide Voter Registration System, etc. that shrinks his pool …. to 6.
I am glad that Coleman has taken his case to trial. The trial is proving that the multiple reviews by local election officials and re-enforced by the State Canvassing Board, Minnesota had a clean election. With 42% of the vote, Franken may be able to claim that he prevailed in this contest, but clearly the voters are not enamored with either candidate. Let’s end the claims of fraudulent and stolen elections and get on to seating a Senator.
Coleman’s talks of appeals are a waste of time … especially if Franken’s 225 vote margin is over 500.
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