Minnesota Court: No To Coleman, And Yes/No/Maybe To Franken

[kickysnana]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/minnesota-court-no-to-coleman-and-yesnomaybe-to-franken.php

First, the court completely denied Coleman's motion to launch a class-action suit on behalf of all 11,000-plus voters whose absentee ballots have still not been counted. The court found that the state's election laws make clear that individuals may apply to have their ballots counted, but that groups cannot be created and represented for this purpose.

The court also handed down a summary judgment on Franken's efforts to get some of his own votes counted, and they've given him a go-ahead on 12 individuals to be accepted and counted at a later time. And to give you an idea of how strict a standard they're using here, there are 38 others on Franken's list they're refusing to count at this time.

In a very interesting turn, the court denied Franken's motion to dismiss Coleman's challenge of the state canvassing board's decision to count the Election Night totals in a Minneapolis precinct that lost an envelope full of ballots, a move that saved Al from a net loss of 46 votes. On the other hand, the court appeared to drop some hints about where they could be going.

Meanwhile, the Coleman campaign has already started digging in on Franken's list of 1,585 rejected ballots to be reviewed for possible counting, and they might have found some bad ones. In fact, they've put up a blog post with this headline: "Disregarding Rights Of Minnesotans, Franken Seeks To Have Illegal Votes Counted."