Senator-elect Al Franken's lawyers today filed their response to
Norm Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court of the results
of the Election Contest. The response is here (pdf).
The response is some forty pages, and goes through every one of Coleman's
arguments. They get refuted both collectively and one by one, in great
detail and with any number of jabs to the legal prowess of Coleman's
team thrown in.
Here they are refuting Coleman's assertions collectively:
Even if this Court were to take Appellants' claims at face value, each
fails as a matter of law. If most cases, Appellant's claims are also
barred as a procedural matter, and, even more fundamentally, they fail
for simply lack of proof.
and in turn, e.g.
...the record is devoid of any evidence of clear or intentional
discrimination... the Court found local officials and election judges
operated under uniform standards on Election Day.
...
Despite Respondent's request that Appellants specifically identify
each rejected ballot they planned to challenge, and the trial court's
direction that they respond, Appellants refused to provide specific
information...
...
The first time Appellants raised a challenge to previously counted
absentee ballots was February 20, nearly five weeks into trial.
Again and again through the text, Franken's lawyers take pot shots
at the Coleman team's competence, e.g.:
Appellants rely on fundamental misconceptions relating to three central
issues: Equal Protection, Due Process and Minnesota's absentee voting
requirements. In light of these errors, even if Appellants' erroneous
characterization of the case were correct, their claims would fail.
Of particular interest is the Franken rebuttal of Coleman's equal
protection claims both in general:
Appellants' expansive reading of 'Bush v Gore' not only finds not
support in the case; it directly contradicts it.
And with respect to specific points:
The Ninth Circuit recently rejected an equal protection claim closely
analogous to Appellants'. see 'Lemons v. Bradbury'... The court
further noted that various governmental efforts -- including the training
provided by the Secretary of State -- helped to provide "sufficient
guarantees of equal treatment" to defeat the equal protection claim.
...
Appellants' claim is deficient because it fails to recognize that local
variations in election administration are often the result of variations
in resources.
...
Appellants' claim fails because the Equal Protection Clause does not
invalidate elections based on minor variations. This principle is both
commonsensical and well-established.
...
...a successful equal protection challenge requires a showing not only
of discrimination, but of intentional or arbitrary discrimination.
...
Appellants' effectively waive the claim by failing to bring all 300,000
absentee ballots (or even all 11000 rejected absentee ballots) before
the trail court... If Appellants' theory of equal protection were
correct, then the constitutional error would be worsened, not remedied,
by a court's imposition of a uniform standard to only a small fraction
of the absentee ballots cast in an election.
And not to leave any potential insult unused:
Of course, Appellants' error rests not only in their misreading of the
law, but in their very approach.
Finally, not to leave any stone unturned, Franken petitions the court
not just to uphold the judgment of the Election Contest, but to
Direct that the Governor and the Secretary of State perform their
ministerial duties to prepare, countersign, and deliver the certificate
of election promptly to the Secretary of the United States Senate...
There is a ton of material in the response, and I have only skimmed
through some of it. Nonetheless, this should give you a taste.