Coleman’s team is presenting five issues that will come before the Minnesota Supreme Court. Because it’s brief, here is the summary, verbatim:
1) Whether the trial court erred in excluding evidence regarding (a) the disparate application by election officials of the statutory standard governing absentee ballots and (b) the presence of illegal votes in the certified totals from election night?
2) Whether the trial court violated the constitutional protections of equal protection and due process when it declared that Respondent received the highest number of “legally cast votes” where the record demonstrated that, by the trial courts rulings, the number of “illegally cast” ballots counted on election day and during the recount greatly exceeded the margin between the candidates and it cannot be determined for which candidate those illegal votes were counted?
3) Whether the trial court violated the constitutional protections of equal protection and due process when it imposed a strict compliance standard for the rejected absentee ballots rather than applying a substantial compliance standard to reflect those actually applied by election officials (as well as this Court’s longstanding policy favoring enfranchisement)?
4) Whether the trial court erred in declining to order inspections of precincts in which double-counting was alleged to have occurred?
5) Whether the trial court erred in ruling that missing ballots from Minneapolis Precinct 3-1 were properly included in the tally of legally cast votes?
The last two claims pertain to election-night ballots that Coleman wants un-counted, and the first three deal with the trial court’s February 13 ruling on the standard for counting absentee ballots, a standard that Coleman’s side claims is not in keeping with the normal standard.
Marc Elias, Franken’s attorney, confidently predicted victory in a conference call moments ago. “At every stage I hear from the Coleman lawyers how the stage is where they’re going to prevail,” he said. “We will make our arguments to the state Supreme Court. I have every reason to believe that they will follow the law of Minnesota and the U.S. Constitution, just as the three-judge panel did…”