Bad day for Norm.
Yesterday the court heard arguments regarding the campaigns' positions on 19 categories of rejected absentee ballot envelopes, and whether the voters should be cut sufficient slack as to allow the ballot in. The court has now handed down a ruling on 13 of those categories -- and it's an emphatic No.
Coleman has currently been allowed to argue for the inclusion of about 4,800 ballots, which were selected from the total pool of over 11,000 rejected votes and just so happen to come largely from his own strongholds. What this ruling means is that he is going to have to significantly chop that list down for the remainder of this trial.
This is not the final word on this question -- Coleman will almost certainly appeal it -- but it's been a very rough day.
The court rejected Coleman's contention that swaths of citizens have been unjustly denied their votes: "The court is confident that although it may discover certain additional ballots that were legally cast under relevant law, there is no systemic problem of disenfranchisement in the state's election system, including in its absentee-balloting procedures."
There aren't many more places for Coleman to pick up votes anymore. If the court throws out the last six categories, as they probably will (as state law demands), then Coleman is dead in the water. We're getting close to the end.