Coleman taking Senate case to higher court

The Minnesota Senate race is officially headed for the state Supreme Court after Norm Coleman’s campaign announced Monday that it was filing a notice of appeal.

The move will further prevent the seating of Al Franken (D), who at this point holds a lead of more than 300 votes in the race.

{mosads}Coleman’s lawyers believe they will be able to argue that different standards were applied in different places and that a February ruling made by a three-judge panel applied a different standard to ballots than was used on Election Day.

“We do believe that the district court got it wrong on the law,” Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg said. “Their decision disenfranchises many Minnesotans whose votes have been wrongly rejected.”

The document Coleman’s campaign is filing is largely perfunctory and won’t contain a lengthy legal brief detailing their case.

Franken attorney Marc Elias said Coleman should just give up.

“What we have now is the death throws of the Coleman legal effort,”
Elias said. “Sometimes you come up on the short end of a very close and bitter election. At some point you need to accept the reality for what it is.”

Elias said Franken’s team will file a motion Tuesday to accelerate the proceedings.

This story was updated at 6:11 p.m.