In Blow To Coleman, Minnesota Court To Review Only 400 Ballots For Possible Opening

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The Minnesota election court has just handed down a much-awaited ruling, laying out which previously-rejected ballots might just be counted yet — and though it’s unclear right now whose votes are whose, it doesn’t look all that good for Norm Coleman.

The court reviewed 980 copies of rejected absentee ballots that both campaigns had submitted to the court arguing they should be counted under the law. We don’t know the exact proportions, and Coleman alone had submitted more than that. Of those, the court has individually selected 400 of those for final review of the originals. But even all 400 of these won’t be counted: “To be clear, not every absentee ballot identified in this Order will ultimately be opened and counted.”

The ballots will be delivered to the Secretary of State’s office by noon Monday, and those that are cleared for inclusion will be counted the next day.

So what kinds of ballots will be counted, and what processes went into determining this?

Both campaigns submitted lists of ballots that they said they’d proven were legal and ought to be counted — and here’s what the court thought of them:

“Upon the Court’s initial review, it became apparent that the parties’ spreadsheets identifying the relevant exhibits were inadequate and unreliable. This required the Court to complete an exhaustive review of all the records and documents submitted by either party throughout the course of the entire trial.”

The court thus reviewed:

“…19,181 pages of filings, including pleadings, motions and legal memoranda from the parties; 1,717 individual exhibits admitted into evidence; and testimony from 142 witness examinations, including election officials from 38 Minnesota counties and cities and 69 voters who appeared and testified in defense of their ballots. The trial evidence comprised exhibits offered in three-ring binders that, when stacked, equaled over 21 feet of paper copies.”

Don’t think they’re just complaining about the length — not that anybody would blame them. The court is clearly establishing the level of diligence they went to in order to decide the questions at hand — thus guarding themselves against any appeal on procedural grounds.

The court then explicitly rejects various calls for lenient standards in admitting new ballots, saying each one must be individually proved as fully legal. And when declaring that Coleman had the burden of proof to meet his claims — they reject on multiple occasions the argument during trial that they should presume a ballot is valid without evidence to the contrary — they add:

The Court gave both parties every opportunity to meet this burden. The court did not impose time limits on the length of the election contest nor did it limit either party’s opportunity to call witnesses or introduce evidence.

The court will now review these 400 ballots to make sure they met every single requirement of the law. Some of them will definitely be counted, but an unknown number are simply being reviewed because the court needs the genuine article to figure out an ambiguous point.

Looking at the math, it’s very bad for Norm Coleman. Even if all 400 ballots were counted and went more to Coleman, it probably wouldn’t produce enough swing to overturn Franken’s 225-vote lead. A more likely guess would be that some percentage are counted, and they break to Franken — after all, the court systematically rejected Coleman’s pleas for lenient standards.

Two weeks ago, Norm Coleman’s lead trial lawyer predicted that the trial would likely end with Al Franken winning, and with a slightly larger lead than before — then come the appeals. This new court order certainly seems to corroborate that prediction.

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