A few months back, before the State Canvassing Board and Minnesota Supreme Court made decisions about how votes should be counted, the Al Franken campaign used YouTube to urge that every vote should be counted.

Remember, it was the Norm Coleman campaign that preferred not to have rejected absentee ballots counted until the election contest phase, the one we’re in right now.

Sunday -- on the eve of the state trial (1 p.m. today broadcast right here at MinnPost) that will determine the final, legal winner of the 2008 U.S. Senate race -- the Coleman campaign copied the technique and lifted some excerpts from that Franken YouTube posting and added a few other clips, playing back Franken-side words to make Coleman’s new point: “Count every vote.” The video:

Actually,  Coleman’s legal assertion is that the three-judge panel should review all 12,000 rejected absentee ballots.  That could amount to another 4,000 to 5,000 votes counted in an ever-expanding universe of votes, Coleman lawyers say.

But “Alice in Wonderland” is how Franken lawyer Marc Elias refers to the evolving/morphing Coleman legal position.

Undoubtedly, the absentee ballot issue – and District Court Judges Elizabeth Hayden, Kurt Marben and Denise Reilly ruling on it – will go a long way in determining whether Franken holds on to his 225-vote lead.