Pressing its case in the Senate election trial, Norm Coleman's campaign argued Thursday that some votes already tallied during the recount must be illegal, going by a ruling issued by the judges last week.
It's a mess that only the court can fix, Coleman spokesman Ben Ginsberg said.
"There are more illegal votes in the current counts than in Al Franken's erstwhile [225-vote] lead, ... the margin in the race right now," Ginsberg said after Thursday's proceedings.
The ruling in question was issued last Friday, when Judges Elizabeth Hayden, Kurt Marben and Denise Reilly tossed out most of 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots that were candidates for reconsideration. Adding absentee ballots that may have been wrongly rejected is a key part of Coleman's case as he tries to overtake Franken.
In the memo accompanying the order, the judges said they won't count any ballot that doesn't meet the "unambiguous terms" of state law, and they cited the statute saying that an eligible absentee vote must be witnessed "by anyone who is registered to vote in Minnesota."
Ginsberg said that testimony on Thursday made it clear that most local election officials didn't check to see whether all absentee-ballot witnesses were registered, thus letting ballots be counted that the court says shouldn't have been.
It was the latest salvo in Coleman's case that different standards were used across the state to judge similar absentee ballots.
On the other hand, Franken lawyer Marc Elias said another ruling makes it clear that the judges think what they termed "irregularities between the counties" in applying the pertinent state law are irrelevant. That ruling, issued Wednesday, denied Coleman's attempt to hear from a St. Cloud economics professor about varying rejection rates of ballots in different counties.
