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Mar 12, 2009 7:00 pm US/Central
Minn. Senate Case Closing Arguments Set For Friday
ST. PAUL (AP) ―
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Coleman trails Franken by 225 votes after a statewide recount.
AP
A spurt of courtroom activity wrapped up the testimony phase of Minnesota's Senate trial Thursday, and the case will be in the judges' hands by the weekend.
Attorneys for Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken will have an hour each Friday to sum up why they believe they won the closest U.S. Senate race in American history.
After hearing from more than 100 witnesses and receiving thousands of pages of evidence, the three judges are under no deadline to rule on Coleman's lawsuit. They must decide which rejected absentee ballots to allow into the count, whether to subtract allegedly ill-gotten votes from Franken's total and ultimately determine which candidate received the most votes.
Franken entered the seven-week trial up by 225 votes after a lengthy hand recount of 2.9 million ballots.
On Thursday, Franken's team put three witnesses on the stand before David Lillehaug announced they were ready to rest. Coleman's lawyers called three people in a swift rebuttal case and put binders of materials before the court that could serve as the foundation for appeal if the decision goes against him.
A skirmish over the admissibility of those "offers of proof," which don't carry the full weight of evidence, made clear both sides were anticipating a review by a higher court.
"We believe the rules of the game were changed during the game," said Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg, who pointedly questioned decisions by the judges looking on. Friedberg dwelled mostly on inconsistencies among counties in verifying the registration status of absentee voters and their required witnesses, which he said the panel exacerbated with the adoption of strict standards for ballots it would consider.
Franken lawyer Kevin Hamilton told the judges Coleman's side appeared to be making an official record that could be used in "a different forum at a different time" and urged them to keep the information out.
As the one who sued, Coleman carried the burden of proof in the case.
The former GOP senator has tried to show that thousands of absentee ballots that weren't counted should have been. On Wednesday, his side gave the court a list of 1,359 names of voters whose absentee ballots may have been rejected in error, although Franken's lawyers say he proved a mere six.
Coleman also contends that Franken received improper votes during the recount in two main forms:
--A state board let Minneapolis officials rely on Election Night results in a precinct where 132 ballots were lost, which kept Franken from losing 46 net votes.
--Officials failed to put proper markings on ballots that vote counting machines couldn't read, creating the possibility that the original and replacement ballots made it into the recount. Coleman argues that benefitted Franken to the tune of 125 net votes.
Late in the trial, Coleman's lawyers criticized a statewide voter registration database as inaccurate and unreliable. They said data entry errors could have cost people their votes. Both sides consulted to determine voter eligibility, but the judges restricted the ability of Coleman's team to call the database into question.
For his part, Franken's attorneys pushed to include hundreds of uncounted absentee ballots and tried to make the case that missing ballots around Minnesota actually cost him more votes than Coleman.
During trial, the court also heard from a group of voters independently pushing to have their rejected ballots counted. All were represented by Minneapolis attorney Charlie Nauen, who has already persuaded the court to count 35 new votes belonging to Franken backers.
White Bear Lake retiree Catherine Brigham was among a few who took the stand Thursday. She maintained she was properly registered, filled out all of the required paperwork for an absentee ballot and didn't cast another ballot on Election Day.
Upon learning in early November that her ballot had been rejected for lack of proper registration, Brigham said she reached out to anyone she could to plead her case, including Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.
"I felt really cheated," she said.
Another voter, Dennis Erickson of Plymouth, told the court he voted absentee and was in Brainerd on Nov. 4. His ballot was rejected on the grounds he showed up in person at the polls to cancel out his earlier ballot.
"There are two other Dennis Ericksons in Plymouth. What they were up to I do not know," he said.
Nauen pushed to erase any doubt. "Are you trying to vote twice?"
"No," Erickson said without hesitation.
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Norm Coleman was born in New York City in 1949. Al Franken was born in New York City in 1951.
(© 2010 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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