The judges in Minnesota’s Senate trial rejected a complaint from Al Franken on Monday that Norm Coleman’s attorneys weren’t following trial rules and were slowing things down. But the judges said they would explore other ways to go faster.
Coleman’s attorneys are working through about 4,700 rejected absentee ballots one by one, presenting evidence they hope will convince the three-judge panel that the ballots should be added to a race that Franken leads by 225 votes.
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It’s a tedious process expected to take weeks; working through ballots one by one, they’ve covered only four of the state’s 87 counties after two weeks.
While turning aside Franken’s specific objection Monday, the judges said they would meet privately with attorneys from both sides later in the day. Judge Kurt Marben said the goal would be to see “if there is a more expedient way to proceed with the evidence in this case.”
Coleman’s attorneys say about 3,100 rejected ballots should have not been thrown out because it appeared the voter met all legal requirements. An additional 1,600 do have a flaw, but one that is not the voters’ fault, the attorneys say. Those two categories were set by the judges as grounds for inclusion of disputed ballots.
But Franken attorney David Lillehaug complained that the process was inefficient, and said the other side was violating standard trial procedure by not telling Franken’s attorneys beforehand what they planned to argue.
“We don’t find out until direct examination [of a witness] — and they don’t seem to, either,” Lillehaug said.
Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg countered that Coleman had wanted to argue for ballots in several broad categories. That plan fell apart when, in the trial’s first week, Franken objected to Coleman using pen-marked photocopies of the ballots as evidence.
That’s why the process has become so tedious, he said.
“I would still like to go back and do this category by category — we could do it in 10 percent of the time,” Friedberg said. “I do not have any great desire to go county by county.”
After meeting privately, the judges overruled Franken’s objection. After that, Friedberg began a ballot-by-ballot review with the election manager in Dakota County.
