Coleman can appeal all he wants, but he's never going to get an injunction from the SCOTUS against seating Franken. Besides, now that his website fundraising operation had such a huge security breach, I expect the wingnut money is drying up. Is Norman so nutty that he would spend his own precious money appealing his thin case to the Supremes? I doubt so.

I hope the ECC considers and decides the equal protection claim, which I think would prevent Coleman from asserting it in a collateral federal district court action.

If they conclude it isn't in their jurisdiction, Coleman can walk to the federal courthouse and bottle this thing up forever if he wants.

As one can read on Politico and as is linked on the main page, McConnell is hoping for an assist from the dark hand of Justice Scalia.

If there was any doubt that Bush v. Gore turned us into a banana republic, McConnell wants 5 justices to remove it this time around.

I was fascinated by Coleman's internally opposing arguments all laid out in the same speech. We heard again how he wants to enfranchise all voters in one phase and then goes on to explain in the next phase how 132 ballots which were lost should just be thrown away. Plus a few more from here and there.

Following Friedberg's argument on the subject of how much verification is enough on any given ballot leads to interesting speculation. One doesn't actually need to find an absentee ballot application because if there weren't one, a ballot couldn't have been sent. (He sort of omitted the part about needing to match the signature and address on the application to the ballot itself.) It's OK if the application is signed by Mom for a student's ballot because he obviously authorized her. Because 96% of voters in whatever county have appropriately registered voters as witnesses, we should just assume that it is so statewide and not bother to check. (If they never checked, I'm pretty sure that number would plummet.) And you don't need to check to be sure a voter whose ballot was rejected didn't then go on to vote at the polling place on election day - even though we heard from several people who did just that. And we know that people in MN don't vote other people's ballots, although they may in Chicago, so we really don't need to be concerned. With every succeeding argument on why he didn't need to provide all the proofs of a legal vote, my jaw just kept dropping further. These are the same people who've spent the last several years screaming about voter fraud?! Can you image the fun and games if the voting rules were really that lax?

In the end Friedberg just really didn't make his case. In fact, he looked exceedingly incompetent and sad. The court still must say something that looks judicial about all of this. In spite of the fact that Friedberg, on behalf of Coleman, spent a lot of time trashing the MN courts and the state's election process, I expect them to come back with serious findings and not just rolling their eyes.

Whatever McConnell may say, it just strikes me as utterly implausible that the U.S. Supreme Court will want to get into this after the Minnesota Supreme Court review. What could be in it for the
SCUSA to get embroiled in recounting every close election in the land by constitutionalizing slight errors or inconsistencies across counties? And how likely are even current conservative Justices apart from Scalia and Thomas to see Bush v. Gore as good for the legitimacy of their institution? Not likely. They have an easy way to dodge this, because of the Senate's constitutional role.

Also, there was a decidely elegaic tone adopted in both Friedberg's closing and Coleman's post-court press conference today. Friedberg almost sounded as if he was apologizing for a sloppy case, and Coleman kept talking about the good that would come out of this case in enfranchising more Minnesota voters, as proposed by both sides, "no matter who wins." Ginsberg, the Republican hack and Bush v. Gore veteran, gave the national party line; but apart from him, it did not sound as if Coleman is spoiling to carry this further, turning himself into a yet-more-obvious tool of unpopular Congressional Republicans. His fundraising cannot be good and he may care about his reputation in Minnesota.

I am willing to bet it will end fast after the Minnesota courts finish.

Norm Coleman is arguing on the one hand that he need not "prove" ballots cast with legal imperfections were actually cast in good faith by the voter, and on the other hand he's saying that Franken must "prove" that there were actually ballots lost, not rely on the evidence of a numbered envelope being missing and the sign in rolls nearly matching the election night totals.

The only possible reason he could be arguing both sides of virtually the same burden of proof arguement is that he needs the votes he'd gain in both to have a chance of winning.

He must know it only really proves he's hypocritical - but he has no choice because that's all he's got. He's toast.

I think Franken being in the Senate would be great, but just like the Jim Jeffords switch, the Leiberman switch, etc. I don't see it changing the world to have one more or less Dem or Rep Senator. If I was Franken I might even think about daring Norm to a coin flip for the seat before the court rules. No matter who won, we could have a permanent story of a Democrat who had the guts to lay it on the line even after a Republican waffled back in fourth and went to court and was about to lose.

On election night or recount night or court case month it wasn't the Republican who had any stones. Fifty-fifty we just may end up with Franken, but if "I'll keep this tied up in court forever" Norm win's the toss, he'll be a laughing stock in the Senate and there's barely any difference betwee 58 votes and 59.

Friedberg said the starting assumption must be that the voter acted correctly -- not that he has to prove they did, but that someone else must disprove it.

So -- if county officials reject an absentee ballot because it does not conform to some provision of the law, the starting presumption should be that the voter acted correctly and that the ballot was rejected in error? We should assume that the county is always wrong? How does that make any sense at all?

Not to mention that if you're measuring probabilities, you should measure not by the percentage of the total number of ballots and applications that voters fill out correctly, but the percentage of the rejected ballots which, subjected to closer scrutiny, turn out to have been rejected in error. And I find it hard to believe that 96% of rejected ballots are rejected in error.

As embarrassingly unprepared and unfocused Joe Friedberg was during this case I don't think even Johnnie Cochran could have gotten a win for Norm. Coleman is a loser, in all ways.

Friedberg said the starting assumption must be that the voter acted correctly -- not that he has to prove they did, but that someone else must disprove it.

"starting assumption"??

starting when??

the starting assumption when the ballot is received might well be that the voter acted correctly. but that assumption is then tested by comparing the ballot against the rules. and the ballot is then counted or rejected based on those rules.

the starting assumption in the election contest phase is that the tally at the end of the recount is correct, not that every ballot cast was done so properly. that is why the burden in the contest is on coleman to prove that the tally is not correct by proving that according to the rules individual ballots were either counted improperly or rejected improperly. wishing it were otherwise isn't a persuasive legal argument.