Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 12:42:44 PM PST
The Minnesota Supreme Court just shot down Coleman's latest attempt to hold on to his Senate seat. Unlike the previous case in which the Court was fractured, the MN Supreme Court unanimously ruled to reject Coleman's challenge
Coleman and his team had argued that the Court should enjoin the Canvassing Board from certifying the election (which would be in Franken's favor) because the "duplicate/original" issue.
Coleman had claimed that because some ballots labeled "originals" were not paired with duplicate ballots, that inevitably means that such duplicates were made but not labeled and thus some ballots were counted twice. He sought to have some such ballots thrown out, which would have given him a narrow lead.
The Franken team had instead argued that there was no actual evidence of any double counting and that instead there were a number of reasons that "originals" were not paired with "duplicates" (the most likely being that duplicates were never created). The Fraken team argued that to reject those ballots would be to disenfranchise legitimately cast ballots, a concern the MN Supreme Court seemed to share. Additionally, Franken's team argued that the principles of Equal Protection required that all precincts be re-canvassed, not just the few that Coleman wanted. This, in essence, would mean that the entire re-count would have to be re-done. The Court also seemed to share this concern.
Thus, for Coleman to make a stand on this issue, he's going to have to do it in a post-certification election contest where he is almost certain to fail. So, barring some surprises from those wrongly rejected absentees, Al Franken will become the newest Senator from the State of Minnesota.
