Franken gets jump-start on Minnesota Senate hearing

Al Franken got a jump-start to Norm Coleman’s arguments
in Monday’s legal challenge to the Minnesota Senate race when his attorney
slammed the Coleman campaign during a pre-trial conference call.

Franken attorney Marc Elias, particularly animated during
the call, criticized Coleman’s campaign for allegedly shifting arguments during
the ongoing challenge to Franken’s 225-vote lead certified earlier this month
by the state’s Board of Canvassers. He called Coleman’s campaign the
“charter members of the Flat Earth Society.”

{mosads}”Though they claim that their lawsuit to overturn
election results is about counting every vote, they are seeking to
disenfranchise Minnesota voters,” Elias said after listing off the race’s
long series of developments.

His repeated comparisons to “members of the Flat
Earth Society” is a reference to an organization founded in the 1950s that
insists the Earth is flat, despite evidence to the contrary.

But the Coleman campaign argued
it has been “consistent the entire time.”

“In spite of Marc Elias’ bombast, we’ve been
consistent the entire time. We said that the contest phase was the proper place
under state law to resolve the questions about the absentee ballots in order to
achieve uniformity,” said Coleman spokesman Mark Drake. “We’re now in
that phase.”

The trial phase of Coleman’s challenge to the outcome is
scheduled to begin Monday at 2 p.m. EST, and is expected to last until 5:30
p.m.

“Don’t believe them when they say they want every
vote counted,” Elias said of the Coleman campaign’s latest maneuvers,
seeking to overturn elements of decisions throughout the race that have netted
Franken additional votes. “That has never been their posture in this
race.”

“The Canvassing Board’s counting of only some of the
rejected absentees has resulted in similar ballots being counted differently,
an equal-protection violation that must be corrected during the contest
phase,” Drake countered. “As our Web video makes clear, the Franken
campaign’s shift on ‘counting every vote’ has been nothing short of
staggering.”