Norm Coleman

Norm Coleman has kept his word and filed a notice of petition to appeal his election-contest loss today to the Minnesota Supreme Court (pdfs available here). The former U.S. senator’s petition will ask the state’s high court to find fault with last week’s election contest court ruling that Democrat Al Franken won Coleman’s old Senate seat by 312 votes.

Coleman lawyers Ben Ginsberg and Jim Langdon told reporters by phone that the petition highlights alleged double-counting of votes and failure to count thousands of rejected absentee ballots. Among the arguments are equal-protection and due-process claims based on the U.S. Constitution.

Langdon said the high court would have broader discretion to consider such Constitutional arguments tahndid the lower, three-judge election-contest panel, which he said was more constrained by prior court rulings.

Langdon estimated that oral arguments the Coleman’s side is requesting could come in two weeks to two months, although the Supreme Court isn’t actually obligated to hold oral arguments at all. He said he expects “a very time-sensitive and expedited schedule” — in part because rules obligate the court to drop everything else for this kind of case.

St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Jason Hoppin asked what made Coleman think the ballots he wants opened and counted would break his way, when batches of ballots opened during the recount and the election contest trial favored Franken.

After commenting that “you guys like asking this question don’t you, Jason?” (an apparent reference to back-and-forth with the PiPress going back a couple weeks) Ginsberg said absentee ballots opened since the election have been more from precincts that favored Franken than Coleman. The ballots Coleman wants counted come from precincts that favored him, Ginsberg claimed.

“You just never know what any one ballot will hold,” Ginsberg said.

Ginseberg reiterated several times that Minnesota’s tradition has been enfranchising voters on principle. “A large measure of the reason for this appeal is that principal,” he said (emphasis added). Ginsberg didn’t supply — and wasn’t asked for — the other reasons for Coleman’s appeal.

Ginsberg, a veteran of the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election dispute, wouldn’t say where he was calling from, but it was apparently not Minnesota. A question early in the telephone news conference — “How’s the weather across the pond, Ben?” — led MinnPost reporter Jay Weiner to ask Ginsberg if he was in Europe. Ginsberg would only say he was in a “secret and undisclosed” location.

Coleman’s move takes Minnesota’s disputed U.S. Senate election past the high-water mark left by the state’s last great statewide recount, the 1962 governor’s race. In that race, the Republican trailing in votes, incumbent Gov. Elmer Anderson, declined to appeal the lower court’s decision to the state Supreme Court.

Related: Franken lawyer dismisses Coleman appeal as “same old, same old”