As the testimony continues today in Minnesota, Franken lawyer David Lillehaug has made a very tough criticism of Norm Coleman’s legal team: They haven’t done their homework.
Lillehaug has now begun cross-examining Washington County elections official Kevin Corbid, who was called by the Coleman team to explore their case that there remain unfairly excluded ballots. Earlier today, Corbid mentioned that he’d gone back to his office yesterday and done further research on four rejected ballots that the Coleman team had brought up.
Lillehaug decided to explore this, having Corbid go over his review of those four cases mentioned above. It turned out one of the voters went to the precinct on Election Day; another had obtained a second absentee ballot, after the first one had problems, and has been properly counted; another one was actually counted on Election Night, but the empty ballot envelope was accidentally placed in the rejected pile; and one remains rejected, with Corbid standing by the decision.
It appears the Coleman campaign was not aware of any of this, as indicated by their questioning of Corbid about these cases yesterday — or they had the evidence, and were questioning him anyway.
Earlier in this exchange, Lillehaug had Corbid affirm that the precinct voter rosters are all public record, and anybody can place a data request to obtain one. The roster would be a very important tool for reviewing these cases.
“And if you happened to have started a lawsuit,” Lillehaug asked very pointedly, “then you have the power of subpoena that can be used to deliver that information to your office?”
(By the way, showing up at the polls after casting an absentee ballot is not illegal in Minnesota — it’s a valid way to change your vote or correct a mistake if you found out your absentee had been rejected. The built-in safeguard is that the absentee ballot will be rejected.)
