Franken to Supreme Court: Make Pawlenty and Ritchie issue election certificate

Al Franken is asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to order Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to issue a signed certificate for Franken’s election to the U.S. Senate. Franken contends that one part of Minnesota law requiring a certificate to be issued trumps another that Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie cited in turning down direct requests from Franken yesterday, pending former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s lawsuit.

Ballots that campaigns bumped could cost voters $1000s to get counted

It was a part of a Minnesota Supreme Court order that few could love. Last month the campaigns of Al Franken and Norm Coleman got the right, by a 3-2 court ruling, to reject absentee ballots in the state’s Senate recount that election officials had determined were lawfully cast.

And reject they did, leaving about 400 individual voters with only one way to re-enfranchise themselves: by filing a lawsuit of their own. But they have to do it by Jan. 12, and it could cost as much as $5,000 per voter.

U.S. Senate recount: What’s next?

Al Franken won the U.S. Senate contest by 225 votes. That was the determination that the five-member State Canvassing Board put their signatures to on Monday. Franken duly declared victory, pronouncing himself the “next senator from Minnesota.”

But as subsequent events have made abundantly clear that doesn’t mean the never-ending Senate contest is over. Indeed the legal contest filed by Norm Coleman’s campaign on Tuesday means it could still drag on for months. Here’s a quick primer on what will unfold in the coming weeks.

WSJ recount editorial prompts non-meek response from Judge Cleary

A much-criticized Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal editorial that called the Minnesota State Canvassing Board “meek,” Secretary of State Mark Ritchie a man of partisan “machinations,” and Al Franken — who the board determined had won 225 more votes in the statewide recount than former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman — “tainted and undeserving,” has prompted a retort from one of its targets: State Canvassing Board member Edward Cleary.

Supreme Court denies Coleman’s suit to stop certification of election

The Minnesota Supreme Court issued an order late Monday morning denying a petition from the Norm Coleman campaign to stop the State Canvassing Board from certifying the vote in the statewide Senate recount. That clears the way for the canvassing board to certify this afternoon that Al Franken received the most votes in the Nov. 4 election as determined by the recount that followed.

The court said only “obvious errors in the counting or recording of the votes” that all sides could agree on should be fixed in the recount that the canvassing board will certify today. The court left all other disputes to a separate election contest that Coleman’s campaign has pledged to file in court within a week of today’s certification.

Recount quote roundup: All nits have been picked, says chief justice and canvass board member

Here are three quotes from the last 24 hours on the Minnesota recount between Al Franken and former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman:
“Everything’s been looked at and looked at carefully,” is how Minnesota Supreme Court Justice and State Canvassing Board…

Franken to Supreme Court: Don’t stop the count

In a court filing today, the Al Franken for Senate campaign asked the Minnesota Supreme Court not to stop the counting of 953 absentee ballots that is under way in St. Paul, as Norm Coleman’s campaign demanded…

Supreme Court asks to hear from Franken, counties before ruling on Coleman’s suit

The Minnesota Supreme Court ordered (pdf) Friday afternoon that the campaign of Democrat Al Franken respond by 9 a.m. Saturday to Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s Dec. 31 petition to start over on the current court-ordered effort…

Franken camp: Latest Coleman legal ploy is ‘height of chutzpah’

A new lawsuit (pdf) by the campaign of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman asks the Minnesota Supreme Court to order the counting of votes from hundreds of absentee ballots that local officials have twice rejected as invalid.
Democrat Al…

Supes ’n’ Dupes: Minnesota Supreme Court grills recount rivals on duplicate ballots

The Minnesota Supreme Court was visited by ghosts of Last Week Past on Tuesday afternoon as the two sides in the statewide Senate recount paid their second visit in five days. Attorneys for Democrat Al Franken and Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman who debated last Friday about wrongly rejected absentee ballots argued over different issue today: the Coleman camp’s request to stop the recount to determine whether votes on ballots that were damaged and then duplicated for counting purposes on Election Day were counted twice during the recount.