Coleman Files 2nd MN Supreme Court Petition (Won 1st MNSC Decision, + More)

- - Coleman Campaign Moves To Stop Double-Counting Of Votes. Double Counting Means There Will be More Votes Counted than Votes Cast on Election Day

ST. PAUL – In a petition filed with the Minnesota Supreme Court today, the Coleman for Senate campaign has requested the Court to prevent the Minnesota State Canvassing Board from including double-counted votes in its recount totals. The petition seeks to have precincts which now have more votes than voters reconcile their ballots so that the Canvassing Board's numbers are accurate. The campaign also asks that the Court imposes the vote totals in these precincts as recorded on Election Night if the originals and duplicates cannot be reconciled. The campaign further asks that this reconciliation process be part of the process the Court ordered yesterday for improperly rejected absentee ballots. That process must be completed by December 31.

Minnesota law requires local election officials to make a duplicate ballot if an original is damaged during the election night counting process. The officials are supposed to mark all such ballots as "duplicate" ballots and to segregate the original ballots which were damaged and therefore not counted on election night. The problem arose during the hand recount when duplicate ballots could not be found to match the originals because election officials had not marked them as duplicates on election night. The precincts challenged as part of this action are ones where BOTH the originals and duplicates were tabulated in the recount, as evidenced by there now being more votes than voters in those precincts. The effect is that some voters have had their vote counted twice.

The Coleman campaign last night proposed that the campaigns agree on a method for resolving these obvious errors. The Franken campaign rejected the proposal. According to Fritz Knaak, lead attorney for Coleman for Senate, it was hoped that both campaigns could have reached an agreement on this issue and prevented the need for court action. The Canvassing Board members have acknowledged an error with the count, but they said today they lacked the statutory authority to reconcile the obvious errors. That led to the Coleman campaign filing this action with the Minnesota Supreme Court.

“We are disappointed the Franken Campaign would not join us in finding a resolution to this serious problem. Unfortunately, without that resolution, the State Canvassing Board has made it clear they will have to count some Minnesotan’s votes twice. This means that millions of other Minnesota voters are being disenfranchised by the influence of hundreds of duplicate ballots that simply should not be counted. We respect the decision of the Board Members who have said that without an agreement by the campaigns they are powerless to remedy this matter. In order to ensure the integrity of the final results of the recount, the Canvassing Board must be provided clearer direction by the Supreme Court that such double-counting not only violates the Constitution, but also the sole purpose of the Canvassing Board which is to certify a recount only of the ballots counted on election night and not certify numbers which result in more ballots being counted than persons that voted on election day.”

Minnesota Supreme Court sides with Coleman
Coleman for Senate Press Release
The Hill by Michael O'Brien

The state Supreme Court has sided with Sen. Norm Coleman (R) in Minnesota’s contested Senate race, ruling to largely exclude hundreds of ballots Al Franken (D) had sought to include in the recount. The court in part overturned a decision by the state’s Board of Canvassers to recommend that Minnesota’s counties open and tally more than 1,000 absentee ballots that were not counted for any stated, legal reason. In its decision, the court forbade the board to include any of those ballots in its final tally, except in limited circumstances laid out in the decision.

“We order candidates Norm Coleman and Al Franken and their campaign representatives, the Secretary of State, and all county auditors and canvassing boards to establish and implement a process...for the purpose of identifying all absentee ballot envelopes that the local election officials and candidates agree were rejected in error,” Associate Justice Helen M. Meyer wrote in the majority decision.

Read Full Subject Related Article

Supreme Court Ruling (PDF 19pgs)

It is obvious that many MSN reporters and political experts?, claiming the MN Supreme Court ruled against Coleman, have not read and understood the MNSC’s ruling. ~ FlA

TAB

Recount Update
Coleman for Senate, Press Release
December 19th 2008 9:51 AM

And a merry TGIF to you all! Just a couple of quick notes to recap on what transpired yesterday and where things are going today. Today is the day the State Canvassing Board has indicated they would like to have the process of reviewing and deciding on challenged ballots completed. As we indicated yesterday, because of procedural reasons regarding the way the process has been playing out this week, you will likely see the numbers continue to flip flop around and go upside down as a good-sized chunk of withdrawn challenges from the Franken campaign have not yet been awarded back into Norm Coleman’s column. (approx 400 withdrawn challenges - FlA)

By the time you receive this email, the temporary lead that will present itself to Franken will have taken place – and throughout the day that temporary lead will grow. We expect that you will continue to see that happen throughout today and until every ballot that was legally and validly cast has been recounted and a total can be certified. So while varying headlines and a flurry of different numbers will continue, we encourage everyone to just hang on until the process is finished. When it is finished, Norm Coleman will still lead, and we believe, be re-elected to the United States Senate.

Also yesterday the Minnesota Supreme Court laid out an important decision regarding 5th Pile Ballots, and we are pleased that they’ve ordered all of the parties to get together and come up with a uniform, statewide standard to be used by each of the counties. To that end, we reached out to the Franken campaign last night in trying to get something worked out as soon as possible. Our lead counsel Fritz Knaak sent the following text in an email to the Franken campaign:

Gentlemen:

In light of today's request from the Minnesota State Canvassing Board that we jointly propose a plan for the Original/Duplicate Ballot double counting issue combined with today's ruling from the Supreme Court of Minnesota in Coleman v. Ritchie, we ask you to join us in the following.

Since the Supreme Court has ordered all county and local election officials, and the two campaigns, to find all absentee ballot envelopes that they agree were rejected in error by December 31, 2008, we propose that a reconciliation of the Duplicate/Original issue be part of that process in each jurisdiction. It is clear from the Supreme Court's opinion that "[t]he legislature has created processes for correction by country canvassing boards of 'obvious errors in the counting and recording of the votes.'" Where there are more votes than voters, that has clearly occurred.

As the Court noted, correction of such errors "should not be required to await an election contest in district court." Citing Andersen v. Donovan, 264 Minn. 257, 119 N.W.2d 1 (1962); Minn. Stat. 204B.44 (2006).

We propose that each campaign list every county or city in which it believes the Duplicate ballots made on election night to correct damaged ballots are not correctly reconciled with the Originals.

As each of those local Canvassing Boards meets as part of the Supreme Court ordered process for finding wrongly rejected absentee ballots, the campaigns will ensure that the Duplicate/Original issue is resolved and reconciled. The counties will then amend their results by the December 31 deadline so that accurate results are included in the Board's final certification of results.

If the campaigns believe it necessary, they will jointly seek an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court.

We hope you will join us in this effort to provide all Minnesotans with an accurate count in this election as quickly as possible. Without this effort, the Canvassing Board's certificate will lack the accuracy it should have to produce a credible result.

So now we settle in for another day of activity in the recount process.

# # # # #

An Important Update On The Recount Today
December 18th 2008 10:13 AM

Today, the State Canvassing Board will being to review the ballots challenged by our campaign. Due to the structure of this challenge review process, it’s highly likely that we will see the vote totals in this recount temporarily go upside down today.

As you are likely aware, because of the way this process has been structured, all of the Franken challenges were considered first and now the board is working their way through the Coleman challenges. Our campaign brought around 1000 challenges before the board. We are in the process of withdrawing approximately 400 of those, and because the board did not have time to pull them out of the line-up before today’s meeting, today you’ll likely see the numbers flip upside down as a significant number of those withdrawals go back into the Franken column. Because of the timing, the withdrawn challenges that will provide additional Coleman votes will not be awarded until later. This will cause a temporary flip today that will be righted once all the ballots have been reviewed and withdrawn challenges reinstated, likely by tomorrow.

We fully and confidently expect that by the time the review process is complete, the vote totals will right themselves, and Senator Coleman will be ahead, as he has been throughout this recount process.

TAB

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