Campaign Diaries

The three judges that are refereeing Minnesota’s election dispute have not been kind to Norm Coleman. But after suffering from a string of unfavorable rulings, the former Republican got a major break yesterday in his month-long effort to increase the universe of valid ballots!

After ruling in early February that Coleman was allowed to challenge the rejection of 4,700 absentee votes, the court outlined 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots two weeks ago and asked the campaigns to argue whether each category should be counted or rejected. Franken wants as few of these ballots to be deemed valid for his lead to be protected, and he gained a first victory on the 13th when the court ruled that 12 of the 19 categories should not be counted.

Seven categories remained, accounting for thousands of rejected ballots. Yesterday the court took up the matter of the “3A Ballots.”

In Minnesota, an eligible citizen can register on Election Day or as he is sending his absentee ballot by including a registration card with their absentee ballot. To do so, the card needs to be placed outside the secrecy envelope that contains the ballot itself rather than inside so that election officials can determine the citizen’s eligibility and the vote’s validity while remaining blind to his voting intent.

In most counties, election officials rejected ballots from non-registered voters if they did not contain a registration card; but in some precincts, officials have been known to open the secrecy envelope to see whether it contains a registration card and count the ballot if it does.

Coleman’s lawyers argued that all counties should be required to use this inclusive technique, and the court partially agreed yesterday, issuing a decision that requires counties to go through all the ballots that were rejected because the voter was not registered. Election officials will have to sort through those that contain a (valid) registration card inside the secrecy envelope and those that do not. (They will reach in the envelope without looking at the ballot itself and feel the interior to see whether there is a card.)

The court stopped short of saying that the ballots with a valid registration card will be counted (they do, after all, seem to violate election statutes) but it would be strange for the judges to order counties to go through these procedures if they are not willing to also tally ballots with completed registration cards.

There is an estimated 1,500 ballots in this situation that will be sorted and then potentially included in the Coleman-Franken count, an obvious opening for Coleman to close some of his deficit.

That said, there is no reason for Democrats to panic that Franken’s lead is endangered . For one, we will be looking at a far smaller final number than 1,500: Many of these will likely not have a registration card within the envelope; other still might have improperly filled cards. Furthermore,  there is no evidence that Coleman would be the one getting an edge out of these 1,500 ballots, quite the contrary: Newly-registered voters tend to vote Democratic, especially in the 2008 cycle. CNN’s exit poll of the Minnesota Senate race shows Franken leading by 18% among voters who had never voted before.

So why am I saying that this ruling is a boost to Coleman? Simply because his only hope is to convince the court to include thousands of still uncounted ballot, and this new ruling is the most clear sign yet that a massive dump of rejected ballots could occur. Sure, counting the ballots could end up boosting Franken, but Coleman is in such a desperate position that he needs to bet on any potentially valid ballots.

After all, Coleman’s entire exercise puts him in a similarly precarious position. Absentee ballots have shown to favor Franken up until now, so Coleman’s only way forward is to advocate the inclusion of ballots that are more likely to favor his opponent.

The other recent development in the trial is much more positive for the Franken campaign, as missteps by Coleman’s legal team have the judges threatening to struck their entire claim about double-counted ballots. (A ruling could come today or Monday). If Coleman were to win this claim, it would close the gap by about 120 votes, so it would not be enough to put him in the lead anyway; but it could still help him get there if combined with gains from the rejected absentee ballots. In short, it would certainly be a blow to the Coleman campaign for this issue to be struck out of the trial.