Coleman: Reject ballots from voters who did everything right

Here's a gem from Norm Coleman's challenge of Al Franken's victory:

On Election Day, election judges in several precincts failed to initial the backs of Ballots under their control as required by Minnesota law and failed to prevent the deposit of Ballots without such endorsement in the Ballot boxes and voting machines.

In other words, Norm Coleman believes that voters who did everything right should have have their ballots voided -- simply because some election judge didn't initial the back of their ballot.

Moreover, the requirement to which Coleman refers does not come from directly from a statute -- it's actually one of Minnesota's administration rules, and those administrative rules require the election judges do more than just initial the back of ballots. For example:

The judges are to do the following:
(1) meet at the polling place at least one-half hour before voting begins;

So by the logic of Norm Coleman's election contest, if any election judge showed up late, then every ballot cast at that polling location should be voided -- whether or not voters did everything right.

The amazing thing is that this "initial the backs of Ballots" argument is arguably among the stronger arguments contained within Coleman's petition.