This a federal holiday, but the battle for that coveted federal seat from Minnesota – the vacant U.S. Senate post – knows no days off.

Norm Coleman’s communications director Mark Drake told MinnPost minutes ago that the reason the Al Franken campaign isn’t taking a position on reviewing all the previously ballots is that “They no longer want every vote to count.”
Drake, after seeing Franken chief spokesman Andy Barr’s earlier comments, said, “It tells you a lot … It tells you they’re not really interested in every vote counting. They’re interested in distracting and interested in the Franken area votes counting only.”

Barr noted that the Coleman team doesn’t seem to know which approach it wants to take to reviewing the wrongly turned-down ballots.

Drake’s implication, of course, is that many of the rejected absentee ballots that the Coleman side wants to see reviewed come from precincts that could favor the Republican and not Franken.

As for one proposal made Sunday and one made today by the Coleman side, Drake said the Coleman position is what was detailed today at a news conference by lawyers Fritz Knaak and Tony Trimble: review all the previously rejected absentee ballots and count those that were truly turned down incorrectly by local election officials.

The Coleman side continues to call Franken’s 225 vote lead “artificial.” But it was the margin that the State Canvassing Board declared was the official tally.

Now, of course, it’s all going to court, starting with a pre-trial hearing Wednesday.