coleman4Norm Coleman is not giving up. Despite calls from political observers of all ideological stripes for the Republican to concede defeat in the U.S. Senate contest, Coleman plans to appeal yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel certifying Al Franken as the winner to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Coleman’s camp has been promising an appeal for days now as it became clear that he was going to lose the initial state court contest. But attorney Ben Ginsberg repeated this pledge in a conference call this morning. “The point is that there are still thousands of voters who have not had their votes counted whose votes should be counted,” he told reporters.

At the heart of the appeal will undoubtedly be roughly 4,400 absentee ballots that the Coleman camp continues to insist were improperly rejected. Ginsberg contends that different standards were utilized by local election officials across the state to determine which ballots should be legally accepted, a violation of constitutionally mandated equal protection standards.

“As the record in this trial shows, the volume and significance of the equal protection violations is great enough to turn the results of this election,” Ginsberg said. “You cannot know who won this election without coming to grips with the equal protection issue.”

Ginsberg also argued that the ruling by the three-judge panel wrongly ignored double counting of ballots, as well as 132 Minneapolis ballots that were lost but still included in the final vote tally. “Regrettably, this court decided to take expediency over accuracy and never wanted to kick open the hood and look at the engine,” he said.

Coleman now has 10 days to file a notice of appeal. Ginsberg made it clear that they’ll be in no particular hurry. “I would be surprised if it’s before next week,” he said of the filing.