Franken Lawyer: Did Coleman Campaign Steal Ballots?

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A very strange thing just occurred in the Minnesota election trial, with Al Franken’s lawyers trying to raise the possibility that unnamed Coleman workers may have tampered with ballots.

Yesterday, Franken attorney David Lillehaug began presenting a case that a number of ballots had been lost in Washington County during the recount, improperly giving Norm Coleman a net “gain” of ten votes. This is important because a potential remedy for this would be to default to the Election Night totals for affected precincts.

Lillehaug continued to examine county elections officer Kevin Corbid today, and had Corbid narrate a curious story from Election Night. At about 2 a.m., two men showed up who said they were from the Coleman campaign, saying they wanted to observe the process of ballots coming in. Corbid said the men stayed for several hours — they were still there in the parking lot when he himself left the office at 5 a.m. — and mostly stayed in the lobby.

State law says that a campaign may send observers to guard the ballots, but must inform the opposing campaign. Corbid admitted that he did not ask the observers whether they had informed the Franken camp, and Lillehaug was clearly implying that no such notification had happened.

Corbid said the lobby is in the line of sight to the room where the ballots were stored, but he said the ballots were secure. The men were only briefly shown the room itself when they first arrived, but were not allowed past that locked door when the county staffers were going in and out.

Coleman lawyer Joe Friedberg asked Corbid if the men showed any credentials to firmly establish that they were working for Coleman — the answer was no. Friedberg then said how if these men had really been thieves trying to work mischief for Norm Coleman, “they would have been more likely to say they were representing the Franken campaign, wouldn’t they?”

That remark invited an immediate objection by the Franken legal team, which was sustained. Friedberg then stuck to dryly establishing with Corbid that the men did not have any opportunity to steal ballots.

However, Corbid did add that he was concerned enough to call the sheriff after he left the office, asking to send a deputy to check to make sure everything was okay.

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