Legal News

Minnesota?s Senate Recount Trial Set to Kick Off

By Dan Slater

Senate candidate Al Franken bowls, Oct. 14, 2008. (AP/Jim Mone)

“The longest-running Senate campaign in the nation heads into the home stretch this week,” reports the Washington Post. “We think.”

No one’s really sure, given the protracted election battle between Funnyman Al Franken and Minnesota’s incumbent Republican senator, Norm Coleman, if resolution is near. But today, in St. Paul, a three-judge panel will begin a trial to hear Coleman’s challenge. Coleman’s attorneys, according to the StarTrib, are arguing that the canvassing board that oversaw the hand recount established no uniform standard for reviewing the nearly 13,000 absentee ballots rejected on Election Day.

Coleman hopes an additional 3,000 to 5,000 rejected absentee ballots will be allowed into the count, which could flip the race back to him. The lawyers also contend that this trial phase will allow them to fully litigate other issues, including Coleman’s contention that more than 100 votes from a Franken-friendly precinct in Minneapolis were counted twice.

On Thursday, the judges — from St. Cloud, Minneapolis and Thief River Falls — rejected Franken’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The next day, they swept aside Coleman’s request to have inspectors fan out across the state in search of problem ballots.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).