The case for Norm Coleman suing the State of Minnesota

January 6, 12:25 PMSouth St. Paul ExaminerRob Shirk

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Election judge Annabelle Brown

On Jan. 5 The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece  outlining the arguments for Norm Coleman as his campaign readies itself for protracted litigation in his effort to regain his former senate seat.

The article has called the outcome "dubious" and Landslide Al Franken an "illegitimate victor". There are reasons, according to the Wall Street Journal, why Landslide Norm Coleman should sue. Richard Taylor, our intrepid Examiner in Denver, explains what's going on elsewhere.

The recount started with Landslide Norm Coleman leading Landslide Al Franken by 215 votes. On Jan. 5 the State Canvassing Board certified the results of the recount which revealed Landslide Al Franken as the winner by 225 votes, a swing of 440 votes.

He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.- The Wall Street Journal

If you spilled your White Castle coffee all over the ballot when you voted, election officials (Volunteers!) are required to make a duplicate ballot, mark it as DUPLICATE and put them in a different pile. The "Sheesh! I Spilled My Coffee" Pile. It's the law.

Landslide Norm Coleman asserts some of our civic minded election officials, like Annabelle Brown, pictured above, failed to mark "DUPLICATE" on some of the ballots and they were counted twice and that may explain why twenty five or so precincts now have more ballots than people who signed in that bright and hopeful day of Nov. 4., 2008

By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.- Wall Street Journal

There have been inconsistencies. Landslide Al Franken asserted that one Minneapolis precinct  showed fewer ballots than the machine votes recorded on election night. The Canvassing Board, however,  chose to go with the election night totals, giving Landslide Al Franken a 46 vote edge. The Q-tips may have run the ballots through twice, maybe.

A Ramsey County (St. Paul) precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded. This time the Canvassing Board endorsed the recount totals, even though the county now shows more ballots than voters.

This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.- The Wall Street Journal

Then we get to the contentious, wrongly rejected absentee ballots. The individual counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. They had a deadline of Dec. 26. After reviewing all the ballots, the Canvassing board determined 1350 ballots would be considered. Landslide Norm Coleman missed the deadline. The secretary of state's office went ahead and counted what it had, the 1350 absentee ballots submitted by Landslide Al Franken's campaign. The Minnesota Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Landslide Norm Coleman request to standardize this absentee review.

Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State, and head of the State Canvassing Board, made it clear that the board wasn't declaring a winner, just certifying the results emerging from the process of recounting about 2.9 million undisputed ballots, thousands of challenged votes and hundreds of wrongly rejected absentee ballots.