In a quick response to Norm Coleman's lawyer's suggestion Tuesday that a do-over is one option in this election contest, Al Franken's lawyers today hand-delivered to the three-judge panel a letter (PDF) declaring that "this Court lacks the authority to set aside the election."

See colleague Eric Black's analysis on this matter today.

In the two-page letter, Franken lawyers Marc Elias and David Lillehaug write that Coleman attorney James Langdon's suggestions to the court late Tuesday -- and the cases he cites -- "offer little actual support for Contestants' position."

Besides setting aside the 2008 election and having another, Langdon also said one way to address alleged miscounting of votes is to use "pro-rata" mathematics to assign votes to each candidate.

Franken's side writes that state law doesn't allow this sort of proportional allocation of votes to help overturn an election.

As for the setting aside of the election, Elias and Lillehaug write that the three-judge panel's jurisdiction "is limited to deciding which party received the highest number of legally cast votes, and therefore is entitled to receive the certificate of election … Any other remedy lies within the jurisdiction of the United States Senate."

Indeed, it's been Franken's position all along that if the Coleman side believes there was a systemic flaw in this election, then the matter should be decided in the Senate, and not here in Courtroom 300.