Franken attorney David Lillehaug just announced in court that Team Franken is done with its witnesses, and subject to some pending submissions of evidence from the Coleman side, “I am honored to say that contestee Al Franken rests his case.”
The Franken legal team took only a week and a half to makes its case, after having also covered a lot of ground during Coleman’s five weeks at bat.
The Franken legal team brought in a few more rejected absentee voters today, to testify about their circumstances. They also lodged objections to attempts by Team Coleman to introduce new evidence relating to voters they want to advocate for in the rebuttal phase, with the Franken lawyers saying that Coleman can only rebut Franken’s arguments — he cannot reopen his own case and fill in the remaining gaps. Judgments from the court are still pending on these objections.
They also questioned Clay County Auditor Lori Johnson about a precinct where nine ballots were randomly removed on Election Night after they had a surplus compared to the number of people on the roster. (Professor David Schultz of Hamline University tells me this practice is not inconsistent with state law, and is commonly used in this situation.) There were another five ballots also missing during the recount — apparently all of them for Franken — with a net loss of seven votes for Franken in a precinct that Norm Coleman had won to begin with.
Also, further progress was made in the separate petition from 61 Franken voters to have their ballots counted. Attorney Charlie Nauen, who has already obtained permission for 35 previously-rejected absentee ballots to be counted in motions for summary judgment, brought in a handful of witnesses who still had outstanding disputes of fact.
