I bet Coleman will say "Let Gov. Pawlenty name a place holder (both of us excluded) and then you and I do this again in 2010".

Senate Dems might need to start weighing in on this. Does the courts even have the ability to order a new election? While I actually agree that with a vote total this close there should have been a run-off election, the fact of the matter is Minnesota state law doesn't have such rules and according to the rules that Franken followed, the mandatory recount found Franken to be the winner.

This has been my suspicion for quite some time. I suspect Coleman knows that even if he wins every single argument in court (unlikely) he will probably still be behind because the remaining rejected absentee ballots almost certainly tilt towards Franken and he will not be allowed to cherry pick from them.

So, the only possible way for him to win is through a do-over election, which would probably be a straight fight between Franken and Coleman since I doubt anyone else will have the money to compete. While MN law doesn't allow for another election, I believe it's within the remit of the court to order one to take place.

Coleman has a point -- it's obvious that the margin of victory is within the margin of error for a 3 million vote election. There were just too many fallible human beings involved in the process to be certain who one. Of course it was Coleman who first suggested that a recount wasn't even necessary, so he hardly has the high ground on this argument.

In the end, though, I would be startled if a revote was the ruling of the panel. They may go as far as commanding another examination of the rejected absentee ballots, but I don't believe the judges will find enough "taint" in the process (despite the basic issue with the margin of error) to find cause to command a revote.

(It goes without saying that I am not a lawyer :))

It's ridiculous. There is a margin. Let's not kid ourselves, no election (and no vote count) is perfect. But, candidates should be expected to assume an error margin. That someone lost by 225 votes doesn't diminish the fact that there is a margin of error. Unless Coleman can prove that 226 votes were improperly taken from him and assigned to Franken, he's shafted.

Coleman's best bet, it seems, is arguing that the state court should manually recount all of the absentee ballots that were apparently improperly rejected, as determined by state officials. This would be disastrous, though for many reasons:

1.) each state official would be given pretty broad discretion to determine what absentee was "improperly" rejected;
2.) It would take forever to accomplish and would not necessarily add any finality to the process;
3.) The statute makes no mention of a recount of absentees, likely because the reasons for a rejected absentee are difficult to assess 90 days or 6 months after an election, as Coleman proposes.

The most equitable solution, it seems, is to require Coleman to establish the 226 extra votes outside of the absentee ballot process. He has to show that a certain block of votes shouldn't have been assigned to Franken. The challenge: we've had a machine recount and a hand recount. he isn't likely to find another 226 votes unless he gets to the absentees.

An election was held. Votes were cast. All that remains is the final counting of valid ballots, without the legal teams constantly trying to muddy the waters.

That the Coleman team has presented tainted evidence, put witnesses on the stand who admitted outright that they were cherry-picked as Coleman supports, despite arguments to the contrary, should be enough to throw the Coleman case out of court now, and be done with it.

Certify the election, seat Franken, and turn the microscope over the Coleman's financial dealings. Plenty to keep his attorneys busy.

PEACE

There is no provision of any kind of a new election. The Court will settle this. If Norm wants to try again, he will get his chance in 6 years.

This latest argument should be easy to knock down. Margin of error is a statistical term- used when discussing statistical analysis- such as when you are using a sample population and attempting to extrapolate the information to represent the population as a whole. When you are counting ballots there is no margin of error. There is the number of ballots that voted for x, and the number that voted for y.

The franken camp needs to call Nate S. as a witness.

Yes, there is indeed error in counting ballots. But since the election vote represents the complete "population" of voters, as opposed to a poll containing a smaller pool of randomly chosen voters, where their would be a margin of error. When the ballots were manually counted, machine counting error (poorly marked ballots) favored franken somewhat. The improperly rejected absentees favored al big time. Norm wants to go from a strategy of maximizing ballot exlcusion when he was ahead to one of maximizing now excluded votes he think will advantage him (see cherries, picking of). The legal arguments are just window dressing designed to put lipstick on this ugly pig set of facts.

This would seem unlikely in the extreme. As I said in another comment today (caveat: no expertise in Minnesota election law) typically when a court is reviewing the actions of an administrative agency, the court is looking for obvious error or actions that are arbitrary and capricious. Public agencies get A LOT of discretion when their actions are reviewed by the courts.

If this truly is what the Coleman camp is arguing, they are asking the Minnesota Supremes to hold that this was an election that completely failed.

No judge in his or her right mind is going to substitute their judgment for a public authority's without strong proof of rampaging error and unreliability.

I haven't seen anything remotely like that in what's been reported. No election is perfect, but unless something goes wackydoodle haywire, we all have to live with it.

This is why the SCOTUS was so utterly, blatantly wrong in Bush v. Gore. That was a fix, make no mistake.

Of course he wants a re-do election! He knows that such an election would be unlikely to draw the huge numbers of Democrats that the November election drew with Barack Obama on the ballot! He is counting on Democratic voter turnout to be much smaller for such a race.

Just because he didn't win doesn't mean the election system is flawed. Precision isn't a driving factor in elections no matter how close the count. If it were, then SCOTUS should have re-scheduled a do-over in Florida in 2000 - which they didn't.

So the republican from NH is going into the cabinet as Commerce Secretary, and the Democratic Governor is going to appoint a repub to replace him, although we all know that would never happen with any repub governor.

And the winner in Minnesota (Franken) is hardly even mentioned by the powers that be in the Senate.

What next? Does anyone wonder what machinations would be in place if we had a repub administration? I'm not talking illegal stuff; I am talking about the right thing to do; fairness. I am really tired of the way Dems just roll over to look good, when repubs don't give a shit and end up getting their way.

Elections don't have "margins of error." An election is a process by which an official is elected.

Although its intent appears to be to poll the opinion of the citizenry, that's beside the point. It doesn't derive its legality from any claims of polling accuracy. That is, the law doesn't say "poll the electorate and whoever's most popular wins," in which case "margins of error" would come into play. The problem would also be that incredibly complicated sample weighting would also come into play, which would mean we'd all have to throw up our hands and leave all elections up to Nate Silver to decide.

Rather, it says "gather ballots from every eligible voter who wants to vote, and whoever gets the most wins." If you follow the legally mandated steps, that's how you decide who wins. Period.

There is no such thing as a margin of error for elections.

If Colemen can finally get the Supreme Court to intervene, Chief Justice John Roberts will see to it that the Republican legal strategy has not been in vain.

A do over?
I thought we did that ever 2 to 6 years?
Of course waiting until then would mean that you'd actually have to live in Minnesota which is something you apparently don't want to do!