And NOW for something completely different: meaning, action, movement.
By order of the Election Contest Court (ECC) certain ballots shall be counted; Franken's lead of +225 is now an "all over but the shoutin'" +249.
Both sides have to meet a court deadline TODAY, 4:00pm-- and the court order was issued YESTERDAY.
Any deadlines for closure? Nope. Major collapse in case by either side? Negative.
No ruling from the MN Supreme Court on Franken's Motion to force a Certificate of Election. (Day 6 since hearing.)
So a lot of the same-old/ same-old still coming but some great details past the Orange fold for those with time & inclination....
Election Contest Court- Episode XXI- Ballots and Orders for More
A) Change in Karma
How boring has Coleman attorney's Joe Friedberg's case been? On Friday Friedberg asked a question of a witness so slowly he lost his own place in it. Courtroom observers say he has looked physically quite tired; the man is over 70 and has been showing it. Standing for hours on end at peak mental function IS tiring and it doesn't help when your case doesn't have anything to say.
So Tuesday saw Friedberg give way to Tony Trimble for the examination of Dakota County Auditor Kevin Boyle. But the change in lawyers seems to have altered the chemistry in the courtroom and the judges of the ECC made some moves. If you go here:http://www.mncourts.gov/...
you'll see 10 (10!) items: affidavits, orders, motions, all dated Feb. 10.
B) Ballots IN!
There has been a parallel case unfolding alongside the Coleman/Franken collision in ECC: the "Nauen" petitioners. These are 61 voters (formerly known as "64") who believed their absentee ballots were in compliance with the law and were wrongfully rejected. (Nauen is the name of their attorney.)
By MN law such voters are entitled to petition an Election Contest court for relief (typical remedy: count my vote!) and these have done so. (The Franken camp did provide legal help and funding for these 64.)
Tuesday the ECC ordered 23 of these to be added to the totals the candidates received in the Certified Count (although they left open the actual DATE for this to happen. The Secretary of State's Office will apparently do the honors. Also implied was "These 23, but not yet.....because there'll be more coming and you might as well do them all at once.")
The 23 voters in question had filed detailed affidavits telling their "ballot story" and the Court approved.
C) Another Ballot IN!
While dealing with the "Nauen 61" and approving 23 the ECC also provisionally approved 1 more ballot. The voter here also affirmed in her affidavit all she had done to pass muster for her vote to count but with 1 hitch.
A voter must be registered to vote absentee. If they are not registered, or have reason to believe their registration is not current (just moved 2 weeks ago, for example) the absentee ballot packet includes a voter registration card. The deal is your ballot goes in one envelope (the "secrecy" envelope) and then that envelope and the registration card, etc. go in the outer mailing envelope.
This voter did all that but sealed her registration card in the inner "secrecy" envelope. When election officials opened the outer envelope: no registration card, and by checking voter rolls, she was not registered, so, quite properly, "Pile 3" rejected: by reason voter not registered.
Voter says she IS registered by virtue of her registration card that is in the (as yet) unopened "secrecy" envelope. The ECC ordered this ballot be provisionally included with the other 23 and be opened with the others. If her card is indeed there and in order then her vote is IN.
GREAT CALL by the ECC! (We pro-democracy types get very excited when the rule of the People get affirmed.) But its not just me saying that: BOTH Team Coleman and Team Franken applauded this act by the Court. Here's why:
For Team Franken they can continue their mantra "Count Every Legal Vote" with a clean heart. More practically, when precinct election officials sorted their absentee ballots into 4 piles, one for each legal reason for rejecting such a ballot, there were reports of this same situation (registration card inside secrecy envelope) in other locations. Some bloggers on these boards dubbed such cases the "Pile 3A" ballots and there were reports of about 41 of these floating around. (It may be higher than this; I don't recall if the 41 was from statewide or just 1 county. Obviously if the latter then probably over 100 ballots may be on the way to being counted.) As absentees have generally been favoring Franken (if the sampling is random and not cherry-picked) Team Franken can expect more votes.
Then too, as these ballots were admitted because they had been set aside by mistake on the part of election officals that sets off "good, good GOOD, good vibrations" regarding those famous 393 "5th pile" ballots. These are the ballots county officials admitted they made mistakes on and wanted to count but each camp was given veto power on which of the 1346 total ballots of these could be counted. 933 were (and favored Franken +176 net, although minor party candidate Niemackl got his votes too!). Now I think the odds rise in favor of the 393 being admitted as well. (Subject to your clarifications it is unclear to me how many of the Nauen 61 are part of the "5th pile" 1346/ remaining 393. Some? All? A few? Waiting for light on that one.)
"But don't get cocky, kid." Team Coleman applauded too and for sound reasons. First, just getting these 23+1 ballots officially "IN" breaks the legal ice for this Court to actually add to vote totals. That power has always been there but its just cozy to see it actually exerted.
Second, the Coleman case has been to get in previously rejected absentee ballots (from all the piles 1-4, not just these "3A"s.) They have been chary of the "pile 5" ballots (IMproperly rejected absentees), no doubt in part because they broke against them in the big Jan. 3 count of 933 (and Franken's lead went from +49 to the until-yesterday current +225).
But the rest of their case lives and dies on getting other rejected absentee ballots added in. (Of course they have VERY definite ideas of just which particular ballots should be added in.... and no others. Up until yesterday the number of such particular ballots was coincidentally just north of 226. Today those "particulars" just happen to number 250 or more-- coincidentally.)
Third, if such "pile 3A" ballots are from across the state they can hope that some of them may be from more Colemanesque precincts and counties and so help their cause. (I vaguely recall some of these from Stearns County; if so, they have reason to hope. Stearns (just NW of Minneapolis is in MN-06, Bachmann's district) and went rather strongly pro-Coleman as a whole.)
Indeed these are the sort of ballots Joe Friedberg early on mentioned might be worth physically weighing. He caught some flack for that but it wasn't a half-bad suggestion. The registration card would increase the weight of the "secrecy" envelope so you could make a fair case for saying such ballots, even unopened, were from voters who were wrongly denied their vote counting.
So bottom line: a good day for Franken fans but the Coleman side is right to smile too. With some of these ballots the numbers will move Coleman's way on some days to come (just not today, since the pool these 23 +1 came from was strongly Franken.)
On the other hand the Colemaniks should be sobered by today's rulings. The 23 + 1 were admitted because their affidavits were detailed, precise and in conformity with the law. (3 attributes often majorly lacking in the Coleman testimonies so far.) "Substantial compliance" as the Colemaniks have been flinging around WON'T cut it. Do all 4623 Coleman Universe ballots have affidavits with this detail? Hew this close to the law? I doubt it.
So we may be on the road to Franken in the Senate and all of us celebrating in Shamballa but best leave the three dogs in the night a bit longer. :-D
D) More Rejected Ballots.
The ECC got on a roll. With a view toward "expediting" the trial (speeding it up---YAY!) the Court yesterday issued an order to both camps ordering them to show why ballots in 1 of 19 (!) circumstances should or should not be counted. (Order not up at the MN Judicial site but the UpTake lists this weblink (PDF-4 page) at the 6:29 time mark of yesterday's blog: http://tinyurl.com/...)
This sounds like the Court is getting both sides to sort the Coleman universe (and obviously argue over individual ballots) 19 ways and then RULE on the 19 groups. (Might I suggest the classic Roman "thumbs up/thumbs down" group photo over each of the 19 piles? Makes a lovely documentary moment.)
But what's really cool is the speed demanded: the Court issued this order YESTERDAY, close of court, 4:00pm. Due date? TODAY, close of court, 4:00pm. In the words of George Carlin and events pre-death: "24 hours. Get your act together!"
Now while "past performance is no guarantee of future results" I for one will NOT be surprised if about, oh, the 10:30am ECC mid-morning recess and cookie break, Lillehaug, Elias and friends say, "May it please the Court (and it WILL!) Team Franken hereby submits their 19 slices of the Coleman universe. (Beat the deadline again!)
"Your Honors will note they are color-coded, tabbed and cross-indexed for easy reference. We hope your honors do not find the fine Corinithian leather bindings and (Sotheby's and National Archives attested) John Marshall autographs on the flyleafs ostentatious. Also we enclose these ballots in virtual form on DVDs and in a searchable, cross-platform database. They are available by voice command in 3-D holographic form via your Honors' iPhones using the supplied "iBallot" software McIntee & Kunin hacked together last night on the UpTake's Apple IIe server (512K!) running MacOS System 4."
(During the cookie break the Judges discover if they run "iBallot" in a linked, 3-way iPhone network, the Judges' Chambers becomes a holodeck and they can virtually visit each of the 4131 precincts around the state and personally interview any local election official or absentee voter in real time.)
About 6 hours later (4:00pm or so) the ECC turns their eyes to Team Coleman. Cullen Sheehan wheels in a warehouse dolly stacked with 19 peck and bushel baskets. John Langdon keeps going in and out the back doors, each time entering with more armloads of ballot photostats, slightly damp, warm to the touch and smelling pungently from the ditto machine. Trimble and Knaak step forward and desperately sift ballots into the pecks and bushels quietly muttering, "Red, green, horsey, the number 7, apple, star-shape, the letter C..." Joe Friedberg strikes a pose and says with Perry Masonesque gravity: "Your honors, the Coleman Universe has arrived. The case speaks for itself. We await Norm Coleman's travel voucher." Court adjourns.
This order has real potential for moving things along. It may also figure in Monday's "Motion Day" arguments. By then the Judges will have had a chance to make up their own minds and be able to push back against both camps with their own position.
Wednesday Morning Minnesota Media
Doyle & Duchschere of the Star Tribune enjoy writing up actual news from the ECC instead of having to pretend in print the Joe Freidberg or anything about the Coleman case is interesting.
Should a ballot be barred if it went to the wrong precinct? Should a ballot be excluded if cast by a non-registered voter? And what about an unsigned ballot where the instructions for signing were obstructed by a pre-printed address sticker?
Those are among 19 questions that District Judges Elizabeth Hayden, Kurt Marben and Denise Reilly want lawyers for Coleman and Franken to answer this week in a major development in a dispute over thousands of ballots that one side or the other wants counted.
Nice run down here but the headline writer ("Judges add 23 to Franken count but its far from over") continues in the tank for Team Horse Dentures:http://www.startribune.com/...
Jay Weiner of the Minn Post runs down the story more crisply and with a better headline writer ("Franken picks up likely 24 votes") here:http://www.minnpost.com/...
Scott Wente (does his family business make a nice Chardonnay & Sauv. Blanc?) adds some local color to the wire story in the Duluth News Tribune:
The remaining 37 voters (of the Nauen 61) that were part of the filing did not provide sufficient evidence to order that their votes be counted, the court said. The judges did not rule out counting them later, if further evidence makes clear they were wrongly rejected.
Eila Nelson of Two Harbors said her ballot was rejected because she improperly filled it out. The 83-year-old has blurred vision because of glaucoma and said she couldn’t see that she accidentally marked Coleman when she intended to vote for Franken. Nelson’s friend pointed out the mistake before it was submitted, and Nelson scratched it out and marked Franken.
(Two Harbors is a lovely little resort sort of town on Lake Superior. Not so much fun to visit right now but delightful in the summer: June 24th to July 11th..... you know, summer on Superior.)
OK I hope that will warm your coffee until 9:00am when so many of you gather at the UpTake for Trial Day 13. Gotta get to the early shift at the wineshop so that'll be the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.