The court also set dates and deadlines for Norm Coleman’s appeal of an election-contest court decision that Al Franken won Coleman’s old U.S. Senate seat. Coleman’s appeal brief is due April 30. Franken’s reply is due May 11, to which Coleman must reply by May 15.

The order removes any doubt that the state’s high court would accept Coleman’s petition to appeal the special three-judge panel’s ruling that the former senator is still 312 votes short of the total votes amassed by the former comedian. Approximately 2.9 million Minnesotans cast ballots in the race. 

It also quashes hopes and predictions that Minnesota might have a second U.S. Senator seated by Memorial Day. One expert has speculated that the state Supreme Court justices might take two to three weeks to rule after hearing oral arguments. 

A minor order issued yesterday in the case was signed by only five of the court’s justices, signaling that as with earlier high-court decisions, only those who did not serve on the State Canvassing Board (which oversaw the statewide hand recount in the race) will deliberate on Coleman’s appeal.

Yesterday’s order also suggested that justices who made financial contributions to the candidates before joining the bench — even to Coleman’s 2008 campaign — won’t recuse themselves from considering the appeal.

In the article, “Minnesota Senate Rivals Dig In for Recount Battle,” reporter Christina Capecchi (who also writes for MinnPost), identifies Noah Rouen only as a 34-year-old who “swore off political talk on a pheasant hunt last weekend.” When he and his buddies heard of the now-legendary (and debunked) 32-ballots-in-a-car-trunk story, Capecchi writes, “They could not help but hatch a conspiracy theory.”

One reason Rouen might be given to such theories about votes favoring Democrat Al Franken is that Democrats accused him of participating in a conspiracy to distribute false campaign materials against Franken last summer. In a complaint — later dismissed — to the state Office of Administrative Hearing, DFL Party chair Brian Melendez named Rouen along with two other individuals and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace as being behind a television ad that made charges against Franken related to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The complaint says Rouen was a delegate to this year’s Republican National Convention (RNC) and for two years was a staff member for former U.S. Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn. Rouen’s biography at the Web site of his current employer — a St. Paul-based media relations firm called Public Affairs Co., where he is vice president — describes his service to Grams as a staffer and press secretary. Public Affairs Co. rebranded itself as GOP Convention Strategies in a marketing push timed to the RNC.

In an interview with the Minnesota Independent, Rouen said that he worked for Grams’ campaign as well from 1999 to 2000. He said while that level of partisan activity is in his past — he called work for the “Vote Yes Minnesota” referendum campaign his most partisan activity this year — he “makes no bones” about being a Republican or having voted for U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Rouen said he gave Capecchi, who found him via a Facebook group called “Looking for Coleman Ballots,” his whole background during a 30-minute interview two days ago. He said he was surprised to be identified only as a pheasant hunter in the Times article, and in fact was somewhat surprised to be included at all, given how the ballots-in-the-trunk story has since “evolved.” (On Minnesota Public Radio today, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie reiterated that the story was false, calling for those who started the rumor to speak up.)

Capecchi did not return phone messages and e-mails from the Minnesota Independent. The New York Times also has not responded to an email.

Rouen’s political background isn’t hard to trace. In 2002, he ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 60A but was defeated by DFLer Margaret Anderson Kelliher, now speaker of the House. That year he also served as spokesman for the Rod Grams Minnesota Victory Club, a political action committee formed to aid candidates in local races. A frequent writer of letters on newspaper opinion pages, Rouen had a letter that ridiculed Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the Democratic vice presidential candidate, published in the Oct. 31 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Rouen is featured at the end of the second half of the Times article, which contains a series of quotes from political officials and commentators that are introduced by this sentence:

As the recount nears, brickbats from the candidates, their surrogates and ordinary voters are coming fast and furious.

After quotes from mainly conservative sources — itself a point of complaint by Media Matters (referenced by MnIndy on Friday) — Capecchi concludes her article with this:

Noah Rouen, 34, and his buddies swore off political talk on a pheasant hunt last weekend, but when they heard that 32 absentee ballots favoring Mr. Franken were not counted until days later, having been locked in a Minneapolis elections office, they could not help but hatch a conspiracy theory.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Rouen logged onto Facebook and updated his status: “Noah is looking for Coleman ballots in his car.”

Franken nails Coleman with a road sign. He next pulls out a cheese grater and rubs it across Coleman’s forehead. Suave: “CHEESE GRATER! CHEESE GRATER! COLEMAN IS BADLY BUSTED OPEN!” Franken pulls a ladder from underneath the ring and clock Coleman with it. Franken grabs a garbage can and drops toe holds Coleman onto it. Cover. Two count. Coleman staggers back up and Franken knocks him right back out with a steel chair. Crowd: “HOLY S@#$#… HOLY S@#$#.” Franken puts Coleman on top of the ladder and climbs up on the corner turnbuckle. Franken leaps off the turnbuckle and crushes Coleman on the metal ladder. Crowd: “HOLY S@#$#… HOLY S@#$#.” Franken covers. 1…2…3.

New blow-by-blow reportage today has Norm and Al brawling in the parking lot afterward, with the promise of a grudge rematch set for Nov. 25. And you missed the three-way action involving former U.S. Sen. Dean Barkley that ramped up when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and SNLster Tina Fey joined the fray.

You could call the writing wrestler porn, but that four-letter word’s already tapped out in this race. The scribes at Political Championship Wrestling prefer to call it PHEW!: Political Hardcore Extreme Wrestling. To get all elitist-high brow on their asses, it reads a bit like an opera libretto that got shredded together with a Wolf Blitzer transcript.

I am not at all insulted … I try to be understanding of why people feel suspicious. …  I encourage everyone to just chill … I want all votes to be counted properly …

Stephanie wrote:

I am a head election judge in an Anoka County precinct and I am not at all insulted by the requirement for a statewide recount. It might feel different if only certain counties or precincts were picked out for a recount, but in an election with < .01% variance a manual recount of every ballot seems like a reasonable precaution.

It is my experience that virtually all election judges are doing their best to ensure that all election laws are followed to the best of our ability, but we don’t dispute the obvious — that neither human officials nor our voting technology are perfect. I suspect that the vote totals for both candidates will go up as a result of a manual recount, simply because there are a certain number of ballots in which the voter’s intent will be obvious to human counters but not to the optical scanner.

I know that some voters are suspicious of elections officials and after the disaster of the 2000 Florida election I try to be understanding of why people feel suspicious. I don’t, however, think that Ms. Janacek is expressing honest concern. This is her usual MO of disingenuously spreading BS when she actually knows better.

I am pleased by the way the Secretary of State has handled himself so far. I encourage everyone to just chill and let the process provided for by our laws be carried out. It will be carefully supervised both by those entrusted by law and by representatives of both parties so there is little opportunity for anything to happen other than a higher degree of certainty.

Marie wrote:

Isn’t it interesting that the Republicans sound like they are against due process (the recount) and against state rights (it is a MN law to recount under .5 percent). The votes will fall where they may.

I am an election judge as well. I want all votes to be counted properly and at this minimal difference, it’s imperative that it be done by hand. The process will start about Nov 19th and take as long as necessary. I think the Republican anger is partially because they were out spent this whole election cycle. Normally it’s the Democrats who are short on cash. . . this time it was the Republicans.

(Note that these comments came in Nov. 9, before the latest round of charges and counter-charges.)

MPR’s Gary Eichten: “Will we have a U.S. Senator seated in Washington on Jan. 20?”

Ritchie: “At least one.”

MPR: “What about two?”

Ritchie: ”Gary, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say, ‘Yes.’”

Current vote count tracked here. Note: The Senate’s swearing-in is set for Jan. 6, not Jan. 20.

Updated: Norm Coleman’s razor-thin lead over Al Franken keeps getting even tighter. Yesterday, Coleman’s lead was 477 votes, but as of 10:45 a.m. Thursday, it’s now a 438-vote gap. [At 4:15 took a 590-vote lead, but the margin is again back to 336 by 5 pm. At 8:45 pm, Franken trailed by 236 votes. On Friday, Franken trails by 239 votes. By early Saturday, the gap is 221. And, on Monday morning, the tally is 204.] Forum Communications reports one small reason why: Election officials in Buhl, Minn., reportedly went to bed election night without reporting the tallies for its 550 voters to county officials. Also reporting of results in Duluth was delayed because one precinct, “inundated with hundreds of same-day registrations,” took longer to count.

Could the recount shift victory to Franken’s side? Hard to say, but SenateGuru does the math on what that’d take. Answer: Not much.

Franken needs only to pick up one single vote every 8.6 precincts in order to claim the lead.  Every 8 or 9 precincts, there just has to be one single ballot overlooked, one single ballot that didn’t scan right.

Vote tallies are literally changing minute to minute. Follow the changes at the Secretary of State’s Office.

Update: David Brauer offers some interesting details. Two of every 1,000 optically scanned votes aren’t counted, he writes: “Extrapolated, that means 6,000 votes could enter the pool this time.”

Update: Here’s why the vote counts keep changing, from MPR’s Polinaut:

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the Senate vote totals will continue to move as county election officials double check their work. He said the numbers will continue to fluctuate until the County Canvassing Boards certify the election. The deadline for the county boards to certify the numbers is Monday, November 10th. The counties are required to submit their election reports by November 14th to the Minnesota Secretary of State.

The State Canvassing Board will then meet on Tuesday, November 18th to certify the election. At that point, the board will order a recount which is required by state law.

Twin Cities graphic designer Pat Thompson tells Minnesota Independent that Coleman’s Web site uses the same font, Gotham, that Obama’s much-admired branding program has used throughout his campaign. She and local type designer Mark Simonson found a lot to love about the design work from Obama’s camp — as Coleman has too, apparently — when they critiqued the graphics of presidential contenders earlier this year. 

“Victory” is Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s mantra now, his one-word answer to Democratic challenger Al Franken’s new one-word mission statement: “Recount.” Coleman used the word again and again at a press conference this morning, even when referring to the slim lead he holds over Franken. It’s not a tiny, fragile lead, uncertified and vulnerable to reversal; it’s “my margin of victory.”

I saw this banner ad at democraticunderground.com but didn’t use it above because I’m not sure it came from the Obama for America campaign. It doesn’t actually link to anything, and Thompson and Simonson told me last spring that replacing the actual letter “O” with Obama’s wheat-field logo wasn’t a habit of the official Obama design team but rather a hint that knockoff artists were at work. It does however serve as another comparison to Coleman’s copycat Web site.

The difference is that in 2006 the poll numbers justified the fuss: While only 5 percent of those who said they preferred Democrat Mike Hatch for governor said they’d support Republican Mark Kennedy for Senate, more than a quarter of respondents who liked Pawlenty favored Klobuchar too. This time around, only 5 percent of McCain supporters say they’d vote for Democrat Al Franken for Senate, and only 7 percent of Obama supporters say they’d vote to re-elect Republican Norm Coleman. The small numbers this year practically cancel each other out.

Today’s story puffs up the current ticket-splitting phenomenon by postulating an impossible total-coat tail scenario for one candidate but not for the other. That is, if Coleman gets the vote of everyone who chooses McCain, he wins — but only when you don’t count a vote for Franken from every Obama supporter.

Lurking behind the numbers in the Senate race is Independence Party candidate and one-time U.S. senator, Dean Barkley. He’s left out of the story’s graphics which, on A1 and the jump page, show only the foursome of McCain, Obama, Coleman and Franken. But in a sidebar, the unseen Barkley’s effect on the race looms large. Pie charts made from poll results show him drawing support from 19 percent of Obama’s voters and 15 percent of McCain’s.

Which goes to show that Barkley’s presence will impact the outcome much more than any over-hyped population of people planning to split their ballots between major-party president and Senate candidates. That is, unless voters susceptible to the ever-growing onslaught of viscious attack ads draw inspiration to ticket-split from a front-page newspaper story about nothing.

The recession sees the major dailies’ editorialists cutting back on costly opinions — by either picking favorites without naming the issues they like them for, as both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune did in the U.S. Senate race, or beating a wholesale retreat from making a pick at all, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press did in the presidential contest.

The right-wing slide of the dailies’ editorial pages drew wide notice — and the Strib’s pick of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman is a milestone in that descent — but the two Twin Cities rags’ simultaneous tilt away from judging candidates on issues is just as remarkable.

In its 2002 endorsement of Sen. Paul Wellstone’s stand-in, former Vice President Walter Mondale, over Coleman and Dean Barkley, the Strib editorial board wrote:

The agenda promoted by President Bush and largely embraced by candidate Coleman looks like this: shortchanging children and skimping on the elderly; committing the nation to endless consumption of fossil fuels; favoring corporate America over working America; bullying U.S. allies and neglecting U.S. neighbors; and mortgaging the federal budget so that Congress can keep a tax cut tilted heavily toward the rich. That’s not much of a future — yet it could become reality if just one Senate seat shifts from Democratic to Republican hands.

This year, the Strib editorial board wants to see Coleman stay in the Senate, but it’s silent on the particulars of what he ought to do there.

The leadership qualities that he has developed ought to matter more in this year’s election than at other times, when issues might count for more. The world is changing rapidly. Today’s issues may not be tomorrow’s.

The Pioneer Press wouldn’t go there, either, in its endorsement of Coleman over the weekend. Issues, smissues:

We do not agree with either party’s approach to every issue. We know there are those who will vote based purely on those issues or on party allegiance. You don’t need our help to do that. We try to get away from the scorecard and look at the candidates in full. On that basis, we see Coleman as a gifted politician who could help forge a new national consensus without abandoning his conservative principles.

But in its 2002 endorsement of Coleman, the PiPress didn’t have a problem naming issues:

We also have reservations about Mondale’s abiding faith in big government … an enthusiasm for high taxes and command-and-control economic policies that we cannot fully share. A particular worry grows from the need for Washington to find the political courage to modernize America’s great entitlement programs for the elderly — Social Security and Medicare. … In summary, we believe Coleman’s basic priorities are sound — containing federal spending and taxes, strengthening defense, and facing the challenge of restructuring entititlement programs while adding prudent, affordable prescription drug coverage within Medicare.

The PiPress that year mustered the guts to opine in the midst of the pre-election tumult following Sen. Paul Wellstone’s death; but this time around, taking a side in a presidential contest two years in the making proved too much. So the Strib’s Obama-Coleman picks on Sunday stand out not only for their ticket-splitting but for finding their way to print at all.

Here are some other Minnesota newspapers’ endorsements in federal races, with excerpts to show that most managed to cite issues to back up their picks:

Minnesota Daily for Dean Barkley, Independence Party U.S. Senate candidate:

The Barkley campaign strives to be “issues-based” and runs only positive ads. Among other principled ascetics vowed by Barkley is a refusal to pander. He countered Franken’s $5,000 college student tax credit proposal with discipline: “I’m not going to … promise tax credits and new programs because we’re basically $11 trillion in debt.”

St. Cloud Times for Barkley:

… [H]is stands on many issues, while far from shocking, invoke a sense of realism and moderation missing from the Coleman and Franken campaigns. For example, he supports capping federal spending the next four years to put America on track toward reducing the federal debt.

Marshall Independent for Coleman:

Coleman knows this region of the state, and he’s well-schooled and accessible on issues particular to our area such as the Minnesota Highway 23 corridor. We haven’t always agreed with Coleman’s stances or his votes in the past and it’s likely we won’t in the future, but he’s shown himself to be knowledgeable on energy, transportation and other important rural issues.

Rochester Post-Bulletin for Coleman:

We applaud his opposition to drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and we admire the fact that he’s played a key role in creating a new national energy policy.

Mesabi Daily News for Coleman:

Coleman has been a champion of mining initiatives, including his wholehearted support of non-ferrous ventures of PolyMet near Hoyt Lakes and Franconia Minerals on Birch Lake near Babbitt.

The American Jewish World (newspaper of the state’s Jewish community) for Franken:

Franken has proposed a number of initiatives to aid our rural economy, expand educational opportunities and access to health care, and develop sustainable alternative energy options to grow jobs and redress the outflow of dollars to foreign oil producers. If the federal government can come up with $700 billion for Wall Street bankers (the New York Times reported the cost of the bailout at $2.25 trillion), surely we can prioritize money for a bailout of our cities and crumbling infrastructure.

St. Cloud Times for Elwyn Tinklenberg, DFL candidate for U.S. House:

He is an ardent supporter of improving transportation options, … backs reforming No Child Left Behind and … advocates for a responsible withdrawal of U.S forces from Iraq and an increased U.S. presence in Afghanistan. … Incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann has simply made too many serious errors in judgment to deserve a second term.

Rochester Post-Bulletin for Tim Walz, DFL -1st District:

The Post-Bulletin endorses Tim Walz for a second term in the First District, because after less than 22 months in office, we’re impressed by his level of involvement in significant, meaningful legislation. His fingerprints are all over the new Farm Bill, and he was the driving force behind an increase in the mileage reimbursement rate for veterans who must travel to receive medical care. He’s also been a staunch advocate for wind energy and other renewable fuels that already are bringing jobs to the First District.

Star Tribune for Walz and U.S. Rep. John Kline, R – 2nd District:

Democratic incumbent Tim Walz has earned a return trip to the U.S. House after an energetic first term focused on high-profile issues in his southern Minnesota district — agriculture, veterans’ affairs and renewable energy. … Kline has stressed the role of diplomacy and the power of economic sanctions.

And as posted here last week, the Eden Prairie News and Coon Rapids Herald for Erik Paulsen (R) and Ashwin Madia (DFL) in the U.S. House, respectively.

“If Ventura got in this race, I think Coleman should send him a large holiday gift because I think he would be almost ensuring Coleman’s election,” Rapp said at the time. Horner echoed that sentiment: “I think it may just end up confusing things and increasing the chances that Sen. Coleman gets elected.” (You can listed to the program here.)

Four months on, with Ventura presumably back in Mexico chasing waves, a viable third-party candidate has emerged in Dean Barkley. The Independence Party challenger has been polling near 20 percent and is poised to have a major impact on the Senate race — despite having almost no money in what’s expected to be the most expensive campaign in Minnesota history.

But Barkley shouldn’t be expecting any gift baskets from Coleman between now and election day. That’s because the conventional wisdom — i.e. a strong third-party candidate translates into six more years for Norm in Washington — doesn’t seem to be panning out. In fact it’s becoming clear that the emergence of Barkley as a factor in the race is disproportionately hurting the incumbent.

Let’s take a look at the poll numbers. There have been six polls taken since the beginning of August that included Barkley as a choice. Here’s the average spread in those surveys: Coleman, 41.2; Franken, 40.2; Barkley, 12.5. Now consider the spread in the last six polls that included just the Democrat and Republican candidates: Coleman, 49.2; Franken, 42.2.

In other words, Coleman’s lead shrinks from a robust seven points to a statistically insignificant one point when Barkley is included in the equation. Looked at another way, the Independence Party candidate saps an average of eight points away from Coleman, compared to just two points from Franken.

Granted, this isn’t a statistically sound analysis. We’re dealing with a whole slew of different polls that employ different methodologies and sample surveys. But there’s sufficient data to draw a pretty strong conclusion: Contrary to all expectation, the emergence of Barkley as a formidable candidate is deeply endangering Coleman’s re-election prospects.