TheThreeJudges hearing the Coleman-Franken election contest case this morning released a one sentence order denying the Coleman campaign’s request for permission to reargue last week’s ruling in which TheThree had eliminated many categories of flawed absentee ballots from further consideration.
The previous ruling, issued Friday, reduced by roughly 1,000 the number of previously-rejected absentee ballots that could be considered for possible counting. In a letter to the judges, Team Coleman had asked for a reconsideration, on grounds that the judges had created inconsistencies in the way similarly flawed ballots were treated in different counties. The letter was one of several indications that Coleman could take this argument about inconsistencies either to the Minnesota and possibly the U.S. Supreme Courts after the contest, or that it could start a fresh case in federal court, based on the “equal protection” language of the federal Constitution and the precedent of Bush v. Gore, which applied equal protection considerations to the recount of the 2000 presdiential contest in Florida.
TheThreeJudges were having none of it. Without defending their previous ruling, they just said no, you do not have our permission to file a motion asking us to reconsider what we said on Friday. The new order, like every ruling in the case so far, was unanimous.
