Coleman asks Supreme Court to step into recount

Sen. Norm
Coleman’s (R) campaign on Monday asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to stay a
decision by the Board of Canvassers that could significantly sway the
razor-thin margin in the state’s Senate race.

The Franken
campaign argued that the move would disenfranchise voters.

{mosads}The board
recommended that Minnesota’s 87 counties open and count absentee ballots that
were disqualified for no stated, legal reason. The Coleman campaign announced
that it asked the state’s highest court to put a halt to that count until the
court had a chance to lay out uniform standards for counting the ballots,
estimated to number more than 1,000.

“The Supreme
Court ought to direct the local officials to step back, take a breath and allow
the court to set a uniform standard,” Coleman campaign attorney Fritz Knaak
said on a conference call.

Knaak told
reporters that he expected the court to act quickly in deciding whether or not
to reconsider the standards by which disqualified absentee ballots will be
counted in Coleman’s still-contested Senate race against Democrat Al Franken.
The seven-member Supreme Court has five Republican-appointed justices, one
Independent justice, and another who was elected to the court without party
identification.

Franken campaign
officials blasted the suit, accusing Coleman of trying to block the counting of
lawful votes.

“The Coleman
campaign went to the state’s highest court to stop the counting and overrule a
unanimous decision by the canvassing board,” Franken campaign attorney Marc
Elias fired back in a conference call. Elias said that a clear legal standard
for counting the votes already existed in the Minnesota election code.

“Norm Coleman
didn’t get his way on Friday, so he’s suing to stop the counting of lawful ballots
and disenfranchise voters who did nothing wrong,” Franken spokesman Andy Barr
said. “That may be characteristic of his approach to this entire process, but
it’s entirely un-Minnesotan.”

Coleman maintains
a 194-vote lead over Franken in the official tally after a hand recount of the
ballots, but that figure does not take into account the several thousand
ballots challenged by both campaigns over the course of the recount. Each
campaign has withdrawn a majority of its challenges, with Franken’s campaign
expecting to lodge fewer than 500, and Coleman pledging to submit “south of
1,000” to the state’s Board of Canvassers for review this week.