Franken wins by +312 votes.
The MN Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday so today is 72 hours into "The Wait." Lots of folks have weighed in on "now what?" so you can too, just past the Orange fold.
The Legal Beagles
To round up what legal types have been saying about the Monday orals, there has been something of a contrast of "before" and "after." Going into orals (which took a month, and still sounds to me like a trip to the dentist without benefit of painkillers) there was a fair bit of talk about "equal protection." This was keying off of Coleman's Brief (and Franken's Response, as well as the Election Contest Court Decision--which spent 25 of its 53 pages dealing with "EP") and perhaps his best legal argument: When the 87 MN counties received absentee ballots from almost 300,000 voters, did they handle those votes "equally"? Accept them to be counted or reject them on a consistent basis (particularly as to the 4 reasons or tests an absentee ballot has to meet)?
Everybody agrees there was some variation and that likely some ballots were accepted in Pelican Rapids that might have been turned down in Spring Grove. What Coleman had to prove (there's that really pesky word again; not just "assert", "claim", "presume","argue" or "fart off to the press about", but PROVE) was that
- the variations were wider than the law allows/assumes,
- the variations were systematic across the state,
- the variations were either biased by design ("the addresses on these absentee ballots are all from Pretentious Acres on Lake Ain'tWeRich, so dump 'em") or by outcome ("gee, its a coincidence all the naturalized voters from Somalia in this apartment house voting absentee were rejected; unfortunate, but a coincidence")
- the variations were so numerous they could swing the outcome of the election
- which would mean the election failed to provide equal protection (EP) to all voters and to candidate Coleman, was unfair and unconstitutional. It was a tall order.
Team Coleman didn't come close.
Instead of approaching the Constitutional level virtually all the oral questions were about something much more basic: e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e ("find out what it means to me!"; sing it Aretha!)
What it seemed to mean to the Court is that Coleman didn't have much, or enough, or any with strength. This opens the way for the Court to IGNORE the Constitutional stuff and base their ruling on (as Team Franken argued) meeting the burden of proof.
As Eric Black put it over at MNPost:
The justices didn't show that much interest in what is presumed to be Coleman's biggest and best argument: That variations in the treatment of absentee ballots across county lines constitute a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. Their interest seemed closer to the ground and to state law and specifically on whether the ThreeJudge election contest court correctly concluded that Minnesota is a state that requires strict compliance with all the requirements of the law governing absentee voting. And they asked no question that implied any of them thought the trial court got it wrong.
Professor Ned Foley of "The" Ohio State University Law School was in agreement:
"This momentous case may end up with a rather anticlimactic ruling that Coleman loses not because his legal arguments lacked merit, or even that the ballots he wanted counted weren’t voted for him in a large enough ratio, but instead because he simply failed to take the evidentiary steps necessary to show which specific ballots were wrongly treated by local election officials."
Paul Demko at Minnesota Independent has a nice round up of a couple other court watcher opinions here:
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
Kossack ABowers 13 weighed in with a devastating point at the end of a massive comment string from Tuesday:
[Team]Franken noted that the Contest Court examined all absentee ballots entered by Coleman and found that only about 650+ met the requirement that the voter be registered! They then allowed about 370 to be opened and counted as these ballots also met other requirements.
This left less than 300 ballots from registered voters that were NOT counted. So even if ALL other requirements - voter signature, witness, etc were ignored, there still were not enough ballots to overcome Franken's lead of 312 ballots. And that is assuming every single one of the 300 unopened ballots was a vote for Coleman - which clearly was NOT so. In fact a majority were probably for Franken.
Even Coleman never argued that a ballot from a person not registered to vote should count. So even if the "substantial compliance" was used, he still cannot get enough votes to overturn the result.
Norm? You want 4400 ballots considered as e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e, you gotta bring 4400 ballots into court. You bring in 650, all you get is 650. That is all the ECC considered in their findings of fact. And that looks like all the MN Supreme Court is going to consider as well.
Things Pawlenty
As everyone political has likely heard by now our esteemed governor Tim Pawlenty announced he will NOT run for a 3rd term in 2010. Since it is up to the governor's office to issue a Certificate of Election in race for US Senator he is on the spot.
So far he has been saying (and quite correctly and fairly in my view) that he will not issue such a certificate until the election process has played out. Team Franken even went to the MN Supreme Court to try to pry a Certificate from him apart from the whole "ECC & Appeal" procedure and were turned down (5-0) in early February.
But Tim being Tim and there is talk about him running for higher office. (He was apparently on John McCain's final and very short list for Veep before Senator Magoo opted for Caribou Barbie---which led to the St. Paul spectacle (as one Kossack brilliantly summarized it) at the Rethug National Convention when she gave her acceptance speech it was "Gidget addresses the Reichstag." Pawlenty was seen shaking his head lamenting, "That could have been me" as cheers of "ein folk, ein reich, ein fuhrerette" filled the hall.) He has often been careful to say he will wait for "the court process" to play out without telling whether he means JUST the State courts or ALSO the federal courts.
He's still at it.
Appearing on Faux Noise from high atop the Joseph Goebbels Studio, T-Paw said: "You know, Neil, if the Minnesota Supreme Court says, ‘You sign the certificate’ — and there’s not an appeal or some other contrary direction from a federal court — you know, that’s my duty."
You can watch for yourself here:http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
OTOH he then swings over on a jungle vine to Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC ("MainStreamNothingButCrap") show and says:
Pawlenty: Yea, we're anxious to get it resolved but I can't sign the certificate until the State court process is complete, we don't know who the winner is, but as soon as that process is complete and they give direction as to signing the certificate, I'm going to sign it, there's not going to be any undue delay or tactics like that so we'll follow the direction of the court.
http://www.mnprogressiveproject.com/...
(I don't know which interview came first so the sequence here may be reversed, but he said both of these.)
Other Quarters heard from (or Not)
Rachel Stassen Berger of the St. Paul Pioneer Press had the nerve to look up what a certain Republican "national leader" (not Limbaugh) had to say, then and now.
Big (Bad) John Cornyn of Texas a couple months back weighed in that he would personally conduct "World War III" to back Norm Coleman:
"This is about making sure every legal vote is counted, this isn't just about Norm Coleman. This is about protecting the rights of voters," said National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas). "It's to my mind a very noble endeavor and one in which, frankly, I admire his perseverance. I support getting it right, and if that includes a federal lawsuit, then so be it......"
Around the same time he told Politico that the fight could take "years" and threatened World War III if Democrats tried to seat Franken before federal appeals were through.
Now?
Not so much.
The head of the Senate GOP's campaign committee said Wednesday that he would not press Republican Norm Coleman to mount an appeal in the federal court system if the Minnesota Supreme Court rules that Democrat Al Franken won their Senate race.
"I think it's entirely up to him," said John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial
Committee.
http://blogs.twincities.com/...
And out on the delusional wing of the Republican party these days...... MN Democrats Exposed (the name says it all) is a North Country Whack site for all things aquavit-induced. THE oral argument that will settle THE MN senate race was Monday. All sorts of media outlets covered it, wrote about it, put up pix and video, commented on it on DailyKos. But as of this morning, 3 full days after, MN Democrats Exposed has said....
*
*
* (sound of crickets leaving town)
utter silence. Way to keep all 7 of your followers informed, guys.
And for more delusion (and which way is delusion-er is hard to say on this one) with Pawlenty announcing he is not running, all sorts of people in all three parties are climbing into the governors race, or being mentioned for the governors race. One prominent, well-known Republican being mentioned, one who has high statewide recognition is............ (I kid you not)...... Norm Coleman.
Yup. Although when confronted with this delusion a Coleman media hack answered with his own delusion:
By Rachel E. Stassen-Berger on June 3, 2009 2:30 PM | No Comments
Republican Norm Coleman's spokesman answered the would the ex-Senator run for governor in 2010 question with the line:
"I'm still not willing to entertain the possibility of us losing," the Senate race, Tom Erickson said.
Not a bad reminder to those pushing Coleman's name for 2010 -- he's still in the midst of a 2008 race.
"...still not willing to entertain...." Hooo boy! Lets all just walk quietly away. Oh, and Tom? Those guys coming all dressed in white? Carrying the butterfly net? Yeah, Tom. Take it easy. They are here to HELP you. Really. (WineRev tiptoes out of diary softly.)
And to keep YOUR delusional behavior going (of an entirely different order of course) YOU can order your collection of these delusional diaries by going to the website and either using Paypal or the US mails. The collected slab of these postings is available to order here:http://www.wordalchemy.net/...
OK I hope that will hold you until the MN Supremes lay down the law in a way so heavy the wind blows Al Franken right into the US Senate. Thats some of the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.