Al Franken’s legal team scored another victory Wednesday night, and it cut to the heart of Norm Coleman’s case in the ongoing election contest.
The three-judge panel of Elizabeth Hayden, Kurt Marben and Denise Reilly rejected Norm Coleman’s efforts to examine a St. Cloud State economist and conservative blogger King Banaian. The order is here. (PDF)
That might seem like a tiny decision, but it’s the way the judges described it that’s significant.
Coleman’s side wanted Banian to testify about the alleged inconsistencies among the state’s counties in wrongly rejecting absentee ballots. Some counties had many rejections in some categories, such as ballot witnesses who weren’t registered, and other counties and cities had few or none.
The Coleman lawyers have made a big deal of this. They have said this raises “equal protection” issues and is unfair.
The Franken lawyers said in court last week that allowing Banaian to testify was irrelevant and would deteriorate into a confusing battle of experts.
Wednesday night, the judges agreed. They denied Coleman’s request to put Banian on the stand.
But, far more importantly, they reiterated what they’ve been saying and writing recently. It’s something that has perturbed Coleman’s lawyers, especially lead spokesman Ben Ginsberg, who criticized the judges firmly Wednesday.
The judges wrote: “The Court will be reviewing all ballots presented according to the uniform standard contained [in Minnesota law]. It is irrelevant whether there were irregularities between the counties in applying [Minnesota law] prior to this election contest.”
Right now, so-called irregularities between the counties is, as Coleman lawyer Joe Friedberg said this week, “at the heart” of Coleman’s case.
That sentence is piercing.
The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Reilly joked last week that she thought she had “a poker face.”
But, in the past few days, the trio of Hayden-Marben-Reilly is clearly showing its cards.
Many, if not most of us who voted absentee in Minneapolis, voted at the Hennepin County Government Center. Those of us who voted at the Government Center had our absentee ballots witnessed by a person staffing the absentee operation who assured me that he was qualified to sign as the witness.
Now, if that”s the case and most absentee ballots were witnessed by the county as they were cast, it stands to reason that a smaller percent of the Minneapolis/Hennepin County ballots would haver an invalid witness problem than the absentee ballots cast in a county where the absentee voter had to find his or her registered voter witness. A statistical witness would testify that the difference in ballots rejected for witness problems between Hennepin and the other county was statistically improbable, or impossible.
And he would of course be wrong because of the differing circumstances of voting. You can’t compare apples and oranges. His testimony would be useless – the Court made the correct ruling.