Tomorrow morning the five-member statewide canvassing board will meet to discuss the fate of absentee ballots that were rejected by local election officials. Al Franken’s campaign believes that information about those ballots should be scrutinized to determine if they were properly invalidated. Norm Coleman’s campaign has argued that inspecting such ballots is outside the purview of the statewide recount currently under way.

Today the Franken camp provided some insight into how many contested ballots might be at stake in that decision. According to Marc Elias, the Democrat’s lead recount attorney, they have so far received information on rejected absentee ballots from all or part of 66 counties. In those jurisdictions there were at least 6,432 absentee ballots deemed invalid by local election officials.

Elias says Franken’s campaign has already discovered numerous improperly rejected ballots. In Itasca County, for example, the justification given for one ballot being rejected by local election officials was quite blunt: “We screwed up and somebody put it in the reject pile.”

“The fact is that no Minnesotan should be disenfranchised because ‘we screwed up and somebody put it in the reject pile.’” said Elias. “The canvas board has the opportunity to look at these rejected ballots and to do the right thing.”

Whatever the outcome of the canvassing board hearing tomorrow, it seems likely that the fate of the rejected absentee ballots will ultimately be settled in court. The Franken campaign won an initial legal battle in Ramsey County District Court last week when Judge Dale Lindman ruled that the campaign was entitled to information about invalidated absentee ballots. Elias declined to speculate on what course of action the campaign might take if it’s dissatisfied with the canvassing board’s decision on the matter.

“We’re going to take this process one step at a time,” he said. “We have confidence in this process.”

Al Franken (Photo: Aaron Landry) and Norm Coleman (Photo: WDCpix.com)

UPDATE: Judge Lindman has ruled in Franken’s favor.

The fight over the closest Senate contest in Minnesota history turned to the Ramsey County Courthouse this morning.

In a hearing before Judge Dale Lindman, Al Franken’s campaign argued that Ramsey County election officials should be required to turn over information about rejected absentee ballots. Attorney David Lillehaug made the case that the names of all voters who had their ballots invalidated, along with the reason for that decision, should be provided.

“That information is critical to the plaintiff,” he stated

Although Norm Coleman’s campaign is not a party in the lawsuit, that didn’t stop his legal team from weighing in on the matter. Attorney Fritiz Knaak countered that Ramsey County rightfully determined that such data is private under state law. “Our paramount concern really throughout the process has been ballot security,” Knaak said.

Although Judge Lindman did not immediately issue a ruling on the matter, he indicated that one would be forthcoming by the end of the day. Lindman seemed inclined to favor the Franken campaign’s legal reasoning, aggressively questioning assistant Ramsey County attorney Darwin Lookingbill on why the envelopes containing the invalidated ballots shouldn’t be public data. “Shouldn’t they be entitled to look at the envelope?” he asked at one point.

The Franken campaign has requested information from all 87 counties in order to discern whether ballots were improperly rejected. On Monday it issued a legal brief highlighting four cases where it believes voters were wrongly disenfranchised. Despite the Coleman team’s legal stance, it has made an identical request of local election officials. According to Knaak, only 14 jurisdictions have so far complied and two of them subsequently expressed misgivings about providing the data.

Even if the Franken campaign prevails on the public records issue, it likely faces an uphill battle in convincing the statewide canvassing board to examine the purged ballots. In a ruling issued yesterday, the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office indicated that it believes those ballots should not be considered in the statewide manual recount that got underway this morning.

Whatever the outcome of the current legal dispute, it seems unlikely that this will prove to be the final visit to a courtroom by the dueling campaigns.

Photos: Al Franken, courtesy of Aaron Landry. Norm Coleman via WDCpix.com