Status: Wednesday was the third day of Republican Norm Coleman's lawsuit challenging the U.S. Senate recount, which ended Jan. 5 with Democrat Al Franken holding a 225-vote lead. The trial is being heard by a three-judge panel in St. Paul.
THE DAY'S EVENTS
• Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann was the day's only witness, questioned about the criteria and procedures local election officials used to accept or reject absentee ballots.
• The Coleman campaign tried to highlight inconsistencies in how votes were counted, part of its effort to have a number of rejected absentee ballots added to the mix.
• The panel denied the Coleman campaign's bid to keep Franken attorneys from bringing up previous statements the Republican's campaign has made on absentee ballots. The Franken campaign tried to show that the Coleman side has shifted from opposing the counting of additional absentee ballots during the recount to wanting them added now. Coleman lawyers said, in part, that the recount and trial are different types of proceedings and that the Franken campaign has made shifts of its own.
UP NEXT
• The trial resumes at 9 a.m. today.
