The Coleman legal team just went through another round of calling aggrieved voters to the witness stand, pleading that their absentee ballots were improperly rejected. And again, they’ve run into some problems.
The Coleman campaign called Elissa Jackson, a sympathetic mother of a five-month old. During direct examination, Coleman lawyer James Langdon tried to be open about the fact that she found out about her uncounted vote because of a phone call from the Republican Party.
Then came the cross-examination by Franken lawyer Kevin Hamilton, who confirmed that, as with a prior case, the Coleman/GOP people who called her up also asked her who she voted for, and made sure she voted for Coleman. “They didn’t send you that affidavit before they got the answer to the question of who you voted for in the Senate race, did they?” asked Hamilton.
“No, they didn’t,” Jackson replied.
Now remember: During last week’s proceedings, the Coleman camp was saying repeatedly that they were not cherry-picking voters, that they didn’t know whom the people they’re advocating for actually supported, and for all they knew they were helping out Franken-voters. Apparently that wasn’t quite 100% true.
Jackson also admitted that she didn’t sign the ballot envelope. Apparently, a local election workers had placed sticker over the full instructions at the top, but the section requiring the signature was still clearly visible and contained its own self-explanatory certification statement.
“Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t sign,” said Jackson. “I don’t know what the confusion was.”
During a press conference after today’s proceedings, Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg lambasted the Franken legal team. “You heard the vicious grilling that the Franken campaign gave the mother of a five month-old about her ballot not being filled out properly,” said Ginsberg.
Ginsberg was also asked at the presser about comments earlier today by Coleman lawyer John Rock, about the impossibility of a totally accurate vote count. “I’m not sure that it’s possible. If I thought it was possible before, I would have to take the testimony of Mr. Mansky seriously that it’s not.”
A reporter then asked if the goal is to get a count just accurate enough that Coleman is ahead. “No, no,” Ginsberg said. “I mean, I think that at this point the issue is there are a lot of uncounted ballots that were wrongly rejected and should be counted.”
(Special thanks to The Uptake for carrying the Ginbserg presser.)
