Watch Day 17 of Franken-Coleman Senate election trial streaming here right now

February 17, 4:54 AMPolitical Issues ExaminerJudah Freed

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Please be sure to watch the video stream here from today's installment of the Minneapolis trial to determine whether Democrat Al Franken or Republican Norm Coleman will win the U.S. Senate seat for Minnesota. The day-long hearing is being streamed live, starting at 9 AM CT, and is expected to run through the day.

The core of the dispute is that Democrat Franken's team wants the state of Minnesota to count every absentee ballot legally cast by registered voters while Republican Coleman's team wants the state to count almost every absentee ballot, including those with legal problems, such as faulty voter registrations or improper signatures.

If Franken is seated in the Senate, Democrats will control 57 seats. When the votes of the two Democrat-leaning independent Senators are added, Democrats would be one vote shy of the magic 60 votes needed to block future Republican filibusters.

Monday afternoon's brief session featured testimony from three Republican voters followed by consecutive press conferences with the attorneys for each side.

Rep. Norm Coleman Attorney Ben
Ginsberg answers questions from
the media after a short session in
court for the Senate vote recount
trial, Monday, Feb. 16, in St. Paul.
(AP Photo/Bruce Bisping, Pool)

Franken's attorney asserted that Coleman's team is seeking to establish the basis for a Supreme Court appeal of the federal district court decision not to count absentee ballots with problems proscribed by state or federal law.

Last Friday, the three-judge panel ruled out 12 of the 19 absentee ballot categories that Coleman's legal team wants counted.

Also, the judges approved for counting 24 pro-Franken ballots that met the letter of the law being used as the standard, effectively giving Franken an almost 250 vote margin out of the 2.9 million votes cast last November.

At this stage, Coleman's team is seeking to get less than 3500 additional ballots approved for counting, which is the number remaining after the court last Friday reduced the number of contested ballots from more than 4800.

Franken, in contrast, is asking for an additional 800 absentee ballots to be counted. His team asserts that only these uncounted absentee  ballots meet the letter of the law, but they were improperly discarded by various county voting officials in Minnesota.

NOTE: The trial resumes tomorrow, so watch the live feed available here, delivered by TheUpTake.org. as it was last week. (Special thanks to Noah Kunin, Senior Political Correspondent for The UpTake. He is fully supporting the feed being shared here at Examiner.com, and he's keeping me abreast of trial developments.)

Meanwhile, I invite you to read my column on last Friday's court decision along with the commentaries by South St. Paul Examiner Rob Shirk and DC Ethical Issues Examiner Laura Harrison McBride. You also might appreciate Brad Friedman's take on the case at The BradBlog.com.

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