MN Supreme Court Order Locks Coleman In On Request To Count More Absentee Ballots

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 11:03:02 AM EST
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I am glad someone finally said it -- Hennepin County's reply to the Coleman objection to not including certain rejected absentee ballots in the vote count:

[T]his Court [the Minnesota Supreme Court] established a uniform standard for determining which ballots could be forwarded to the Secretary of State for counting. Those ballots must be identified by local election officials as rejected in error and the campaigns must agree with that assessment. In other words, only ballots which the local officials and the two campaigns agree were rejected in error will be passed on to the Secretary of State’s Office.

(Emphasis supplied.) The Minnesota Supreme Court will have to judge its own order to be flawed in order to grant Coleman relief. Of course the initial order requiring agreement from both parties was indeed seriously flawed, as dissenting Justice Alan Page noted at the time:

The court's order may seek the peaceful way out by asking the campaigns to agree on improperly rejected ballots. But the order does not guarantee that the candidates and their political parties will agree on any rejected ballot. Instead, the court's order will arbitrarily disqualify enfranchised voters on the whim of the candidates and political parties without the benefit of the legislatively authorized procedures in section 204C.39.

Indeed. The only thing that stopped this from being a complete train wreck was the fact that Franken took the lead. Otherwise, Coleman would not have accepted any absentee ballots at all. Now that Coleman is behind, he went scrounging for more ballots to count. All so predictable. And Justice Page predicted it.

Speaking for me only

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MN Supreme Court Order Locks Coleman In On Request To Count More Absentee Ballots | 5 comments (5 topical)

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From the guy at The Uptake (none / 0) (#1)
by magster on Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 12:00:15 PM EST

"Mike McIntee: Here's an interesting nugget from the Hennepin County filing: Both campaigns were required to state the reason why they wanted any "extra" ballots considered. Franken's campaign listed the reasons for its 30 ballots. Coleman campaign did not list the reasons for its 170 ballots."

That's pretty embarassing for Coleman.

(O/T: Has the Uptake crashed, or is it my computer?)

Refresh (none / 0) (#2)
by Big Tent Democrat on Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 12:11:39 PM EST

but they took a lunch break anyway.


: Alternate link for Uptake video during site repair (none / 0) (#3)
by magster on Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 12:51:04 PM EST

here

Thanks for the Justice Page quote (none / 0) (#4)
by DFLer on Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 03:21:11 PM EST

I was looking for it to post on earlier discussions of the Court's ruling, without success. I agree with you that he nailed it at the time. I think he's an impressive jurist.

Go Purple People Eaters!

So if Hennepin County is correct (none / 0) (#5)
by Cream City on Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 05:00:24 PM EST

then the state supreme court will have to reject and order a redo of the Anoka County process, as it (and perhaps another county) did it differently?

Oh, that court decision looks worse all the time.