The Impossible Case Continues; But Maybe There is Light at the end of the Tunnel.
The Minnesota US Senate election case is going on, and on, and on. But the three judges, who are admittedly in uncharted waters on this one, are forcing the parties to make arguments about which category of rejected votes should be counted. The judges provided a list of 19 reasons votes were rejected. The parties get to try to argue which ones can be counted.
Since this is like the Twilight Zone, Norm Coleman, the Republican, is arguing that the court should ignore the law and effectively legislate new rules to allow ballots to be counted in violation of the law. This position is contrary to every Republican position over the past several decades that judges must follow the law to the letter. (I've always thought that politicians that preached this line didn't understand either the law or how the courts work.) As an example, Coleman's team was arguing to the court several days ago that absentee ballots with forged signatures should be counted. This of course would violate Minnesota law.
Franken's team is arguing that the court must follow the law - this is a much sounder argument. The Minn.Post has an interesting story about the recount. It is fun to read that Coleman was telling identified voters in one county that their votes were wrongfully rejected - yet the reason they were rejected in the first place was because the Coleman team objected to including them.
Hopefully the court will make some decisions soon that improve the chances that a decision will be made soon.
