How far must county elections officials go to make sure a vote is valid?
In Carver County, they check to make sure witnesses for an absentee voter are registered voters. In Scott County, it's a different story.
Lawyers for Republican Norm Coleman seized on the different approaches Tuesday as evidence of varying practices by local elections officials, a theme they have sounded during the trial over Minnesota's disputed U.S. Senate election.
"Carver County rejected 181 of its absentee ballots because the witnesses were unregistered," Coleman legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg said after the day's proceedings. "Scott County said they don't even check for that. That presents a classic case of the voters of one county having a greater chance of being disenfranchised than the other county."
But a lawyer for DFLer Al Franken said different practices don't demonstrate unfair standards.
"There is one standard -- the law," said Marc Elias. "It doesn't mean that counties don't make mistakes within that standard. But if Mr. Coleman wants to do away with that, then he's going to ... do away with county involvement altogether and we're going to move to a national elections board."
Coleman's camp has often raised the possibility that the conduct of absentee voting in Minnesota violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Elias says Coleman is setting the stage for an appeal to the Minnesota or U.S. Supreme Court, if he loses.
Carver County focus