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Dec 17, 2008 7:59 pm US/Central
Minn. High Court Weighs Rejected Absentees
ST. PAUL (AP) ―
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The board hopes to finish by Friday, but members still have more than 1,000 challenges unless the campaigns pull back a lot more. Pictured Above: Norm Coleman and Al Franken.
Chip Somodevilla & Robin Beck / AFP/Getty Images
Republican Norm Coleman went to court Wednesday to block improperly rejected absentee ballots from Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, with his lawyer warning justices they need to act to prevent a repeat of the tortured 2000 Bush-Gore impasse.
"With the best of intentions, this could become Florida 2008," attorney Roger Magnuson told the court, saying it would be improper to add votes not counted on Election Day.
The argument drew stern words from Justice Paul Anderson.
"This is not Florida," Anderson said. "I don't appreciate the comparison. This is Minnesota, we've got a case in Minnesota and let's argue Minnesota."
The state's month-old recount lurched forward on two fronts Wednesday, with the state Canvassing Board continuing to review more than 1,000 challenged ballots while the Supreme Court went about its business.
An estimated 1,600 rejected absentees are at stake in the question before the high court. Democrat Al Franken wants them counted; Coleman doesn't.
Magnuson argued that the ballots shouldn't be counted because of differences in the way counties decide what amounts to proper rejection. He said the matter was more properly settled in a post-recount lawsuit.
Franken's attorney said state law sets clear standards for whether absentee ballots were properly rejected or not, and those rejected in error should be counted. "Every validly cast vote in the race should be counted," said Franken's attorney, Bill Pentelovitch.
The court gave no indication when it would rule.
Across the State Capitol campus, the Canvassing Board continued to dispose of large blocks of challenges.
By Wednesday afternoon, Coleman had picked up 237 votes and Franken 65; another 116 were discarded. The board was rejecting nearly two challenges for every one upheld.
The net result was Coleman with a 360-vote lead, though that number was expected to change a great deal. Almost all the challenges handled in the early going were from Franken, and since many challenges were made to try to keep the other man's votes off the board, Coleman was benefiting.
The Canvassing Board went faster Wednesday thanks to dozens of on-the-spot withdrawals by Franken's representatives. They were going at a clip of 50 per hour. At that rate, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie estimated it would take 20 hours to get through the rest.
He urged Coleman's campaign to pare back its current list of nearly 1,000. "It would be great to get those knocked down in half," Ritchie said.
While the campaigns withdrew some challenges, they also restored others as they got a look at the board's thinking on different ballot situations.
For instance, the board OK'd ballots where the voter scrawled initials next to apparent errors. But it rejected votes where a person drew an "X" through a filled-out oval.
The board was counting Senate votes on ballots where write-ins for other races was argued to be a tipoff to the voter's identity and those where athletes, entertainers and cartoon characters appeared.
The toughest calls were on ballots where the marking fell outside of any candidate's oval. Members awarded several where the mark was close.
"This person has bad aim," Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, a board member not related to Coleman's attorney, said as he inspected one of those ballots.
Perusing a ballot with an X and a filled oval, members went round and round over which came first because if the X came last it would cancel out the vote.
"They weren't thinking about us when they did this," Ritchie joked.
Justice G. Barry Anderson replied, "That seems to be an ongoing problem."
At a rate of nearly two to one, the board was rejecting the challenges.
The Canvassing Board hoped to finish its task by Friday, though the legal maneuvering promised to delay a final resolution to the Senate race. During the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Alan Page signaled as much in asking attorneys for both campaigns why the high court should step in now since the election is likely to end in litigation no matter what.
"Isn't that sort of the end of the line no matter what we do here?" Page asked.
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Norm Coleman was born in New York City in 1949. Al Franken was born in New York City in 1951.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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