Politics with Marc Ambinder

« Star Trek: The Not-Divided Country | Main | Away With Him, Judge Says »

Mar 31 2009, 5:40 pm by Marc Ambinder

Norm Coleman's Last 400 Shots

It looks like Sen. Norm Coleman's last shot at retaining his Minnesota Senate seat will be an appeal to the state Supreme Court.  Al Franken (D) leads Coleman by 225 votes. Today, the judges overseeing the recount trial said they'll review a tiny number of absentee ballots -- just 400.  Assuming that the judges decide to award those ballots to either candidate, Coleman would need to receive roughly 85 percent of them in order to come close to Franken, much less surpass him. Coleman's lawyers are already looking ahead to an appeal before the state supreme court. There, they'll be able to argue that Coleman was the victim of unspecified constitutional violations by various election authorites in the state. An appeal will take about six weeks. Then, Coleman will have to decide whether he wants to suffer the indignity of having the U.S. Supreme Court decide not to hear his case...

 

:: Comments (7) :: TrackBacks (2) :: Share This

TrackBack

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Norm Coleman's Last 400 Shots:

» MN Senate Court Dribble Rules on 6 Votes - ABC News from Aggregator @ Bitubique
KARE MN Senate Court Dribble Rules on 6 VotesABC NewsBY AP The Minnesota court holding the state's Senate seat in limbo has spoken—but only on the ballots of four voters. Democrat Al Franken, left, and incumbent Republican Norm Coleman are locked i [Read More]

Tracked on March 31, 2009 8:48 PM

» Screwed up in Minnesota from Sister Toldjah
Looks like it’s just about over for Norm Coleman: In a potentially decisive ruling, a panel of three judges today ordered up to 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than Republican Norm Coleman had sought in his effort to overco... [Read More]

Tracked on March 31, 2009 9:19 PM

Comments (7)

AlchemyToday

I don't know that Coleman could contest the election on new constitutional grounds. A claim that different counties applied different standards to absentee ballots, which appears to be Coleman's central complaint, needed to be filed within seven days of the conclusion of the first count. Coleman's complaint about one precinct losing ballots and counting them anyway is really up to a matter of fact determination by the district court and not much of a constitutional issue. Since the current decision lays out the reams of evidence considered by the district court for every vote contested by Coleman or Franken, I don't know where Coleman has a complaint that different voters were treated differently. Presumably that's why this decision spells out in great detail the efforts made to ascertain the facts behind every contested ballot in a uniform manner.

Nothing in the relevant statutes compels the Supreme Court to hear Coleman's appeal; things could proceed quite quickly after the district court finishes counting on 4/7.

Neither a lawyer nor a Minnesotan, so this could all be totally wrong. I just doubt Coleman is as guaranteed to run the clock for another month as you suggest.

TexasNative

Don't give up Norm. You are the vote in the congress that can turn everything around and give some opposition to this totally out of control President. Hang in there all the way to the Supreme Court.

maxpower (Replying to: TexasNative)

Don't you know that the RNC doesn't have the any more ammunition to pull the strings of the courts anymore?

They used up all their juice to steal the 2000 Dubya election.

Nolanimrod

If Coleman loses he should count himself lucky. At the unemployment office he'll find himself hanging around with a better class of people.

By the same token, I think Franken is ideally suited to the world's greatest deliberative body, whose #2 leader compared American GI's at Gitmo to German Nazi death camp guards and whose banking charman can't figure out if he got a good deal on a mortgage.

Besides, Franken's ACORN connection should put him in good stead with the president.

Daniel Beaver (Replying to: Nolanimrod)

Wow, there is a lot of venom in these comments. Can we please focus on the facts of the case rather than the politics of it?

choupachoup

norm coleman has shown that his allegiance is with the republican party and not with the interests of people of minnesota, and anyone who urges him on is motivated by the same destructive, spoiler attitude. all about democracy until they loose, then it's destroy what you can't take.
republicans do not play well with others, and have no wish to.

and those who believe that acorn has any power for evil are the same ones who believe we need obscenely rich folks to define society... that they are an endangered species that must be protected at all costs, especially if you can sacrifice the poor and voiceless.

SeattleBruce

"republicans do not play well with others, and have no wish to."

Wow, that's just such incisive commentary. Gee, you don't suppose that the party in power that's spending trillions and trillions currently under all kinds of different guises and facades is 'playing fair' - do ya?

As to Acorn, unsupervised schemes will always lead to abuses - especially when the so called media has no interest in pursuing objective truth and every interest in promoting an agenda. Yes, coporations, unions and politics are often corrupt and need to be monitored and held accountable - but do you think that Acorn doesn't qualify for this as well? Let's be real!