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| Home Front: Politix |
| Coleman Seeks to Halt Recount Until Process Clear |
| 2008-12-16 |
| Sen. Norm Coleman's (R) campaign has asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to issue a stay in a decision Friday by the state's Board of Canvassers that could significantly sway the razor-thin margin in Minnesota's still-undecided Senate race. The Board recommended that Minnesota's 87 counties open and count absentee ballots that were disqualified for no stated, legal reason. The Coleman campaign said Monday it had asked the state's highest court to put a halt to that count until it could determine uniform standards for counting the ballots, estimated to number more than 1,000. "The Supreme Court ought to direct the local officials to step back, take a breath, and allow the Court to set a uniform standard," Coleman campaign attorney Fritz Knaak said Monday in a conference call. Knaak told reporters he expected the court to act quickly in considering whether or not to reconsider the standards by which disqualified absentee ballots will be counted in their still-contested Senate race against Democrat Al Franken. The seven-member Supreme Court has five Republican-appointed justices, one Independent justice, and another who was elected to the court without party identification. The Coleman campaign also said it had identified ballots that had been counted twice during the recount--a number Knaak pegged in the "low hundreds"--which it will ask the Court to reconsider. At issue is whether "duplicate ballots," ballots filled out by local election officials to mirror another unreadable ballot, were counted along with the original. "We believe there were a significant number of situations where the original ballot and the duplicate were both counted," Knaak said. "We believe it violates the concept of one-person, one-vote." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 The crime scene has been contaminated. You will never get to the truth now. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul by the wood stove 2008-12-16 11:19 |