The Minnesota election court handed down another defeat for Norm Coleman tonight — quite possibly a significant one — ruling in favor of a Franken motion to forbid Coleman from bringing forward an expert witness he wanted.
The background info: Coleman has charged that the variations in how flawed absentee ballots could be accepted in some counties amounted to a violation of Equal Protection, and the only remedy is to throw out the rules entirely and count invalid ballots. To further this claim, he wanted to bring in King Banaian, an economics professor and right-wing blogger, to say that the differing numbers of ballots rejections across counties showed unequal treatment — as opposed to simple differences in the numbers of actual ballots worthy of acceptance of rejection.
The court’s very short analysis sides with Franken’s motion to keep Banaian out — and appears to go further in rejecting the whole premise of Coleman’s argument:
The only question that can be decided in an election contest is which party received the highest number of legally cast votes, and therefore is entitled to receive the certificate of election. Minn. Stat. §209.12. The Court will be reviewing all ballots presented according to the uniform standard contained in Minnesota Statutes Chapter 203B. It is irrelevant whether there were irregularities between the counties in applying Minnesota Statutes §203B.12, subd. 2, prior to this election contest. The Court does not believe Banaian’s testimony would assist in determining the issues properly before it.
In plain English: Seriously, stop wasting our time.
The Coleman camp has made it pretty clear that they’ll be appealing the court’s legal decisions against them, which could drag this out even longer. So put this one on the list.
