Coleman's endgame seems to be twofold:

1. To try to set up grounds for appeal in federal court after his inevitable loss in MN state courts.

2. To try to muddy the waters to give Senate Republicans talking points if they decide to try to prevent Franken's seating.

How are these likely to play out? My 2 cents:

1. After Franken's certification the Senate leaders will issue some kind of statement citing their Art I Sec 5 authority and effectively telling the federal courts to butt out. If Coleman petitions the SCOTUS for certiorari, I don't think he'll be able to convince 4 justices to take the case on. They won't want to risk looking impotent if the Senate tells them to bugger off.

2. There will be some rabid Senate Republicans who want to filibuster, but ultimately, there will be enough to think better of it, and Franken will be seated.

However, if the SCOTUS takes the case and the Senate does, indeed, assert its authority, we could be in for a doozy of a constitutional taffy pull.

Nice letter by Elias. I made a similar point on the burden of proof here: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/coleman-lawyer-floats-new-possibility-to-judges-throwing-out-the-election.php#comment-3395001

There's another reason why a court should never pro-rata deduct votes: if it did so, it might end up REWARDING vote fraud. For example, let's say Candidate X arranges with a sympathetic local election officials to get 100 illegal votes added to his total in a precinct that favors Candidate Y by 60% to 40%. The illegal votes are detected, but no one (except the fraudster) knows who they were cast for. The court therefore applies proportional deduction, subtracting 60 votes from Candidate Y and 40 votes from Candidate X. The net result is the Candidate X is up 100-40=60 and Candidate Y is down by -60, for a net gain of 120 votes.

That's right, after stuffing the ballot box with 100 illegal votes, the candidate actually ends up 120 votes ahead because the Court deducted more votes from his opponent than from him.

This is why proportional deduction should NEVER be applied in an election, because an unscrupulous candidate or his supporters could actually use this to their benefit.

The US Constitution makes it very clear that the US Senate is the "court of last resort" in matters involving elections of US Senators. I'm sure even this Repub majority US Supreme court can read the Constitution well enough to recognize that. So, Coleman will either win in his state courts or lose. Even if he wins in the state court, Franken can get the Democratic Senate to turn Coleman down and accept Franken as the legitimate Senator. So, all that Coleman, and his Repub backers, are doing is stalling to keep the Democratic majority reduced by one as long as is possible. The fat lady in backstage warming up right now.

The issue is not whether the courts think it is legally justified to toss the election. I'm sure they know it's a bogus argument. The real issue is whether they think that they can get away with tossing the election with some flimsy legal premise and help out Coleman. If they can, they will.

What the repubs are trying to do is declare the whole process illegitimate. Their goal is to portray an eventual and inevitable Franken senate seat as "tainted by fraud" and thus paint the dems as the party of corruption.

Since they still view this country as center right this will help them with their claim of divine right to rule. Casting anything the dems do as illegal and against the peoples' will.

Thus they will be able to assert that they are acting to preserve the constitution and nation from the now (in their eyes) entirely lawless "democrat" party. Much like Bush's signing statements they will only obey laws they like or that suit them.

The "illegitimate" seating of Franken will be their trump card for every senate decision that goes against their will.