Oral arguments ended a short while ago on Al Franken’s motion to dismiss Norm Coleman’s lawsuit contesting the Minnesota Senate race, with Franken lawyer David Burman arguing to the special three-judge panel that they do not have the constitutional authority to deal with most of Coleman’s claims — they instead would belong to the Senate — while Coleman’s lawyer James Langdon predictably said the court does have the authority.
Burman lambasted the Coleman team for the general non-specificity of their arguments, saying it created too many openings. “If you allow them to go off on this fishing expedition will they find something? Probably,” Burman said, explaining that an election involving 2.9 million ballots is bound to contain a few new quirks somewhere, even after the long process we’ve already seen. “At some point, Minnesota has to say it has done the best job human beings can reasonably do.”
The most fascinating part, though, was Langdon’s statement the Coleman campaign has examined the remaining 11,000 rejected absentee ballot envelopes, and they now believe 4,500-5,000 should be included — up from their previous number of 654.
“No one knows what’s in them,” said Langdon. “No one’s opened them.”
At this point, though, we should really treat with great skepticism any claim that a selective sample of ballots, no matter how large or small, is unknown in terms of the content. As we’ve learned, the campaigns have had many opportunities to either know for certain what is in a ballot, or at least get an idea of the probabilities, without ever having to open a single envelope.
