Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Coleman ballot universe continues shrinkage

Yesterday was not a good day for Norm Coleman's chance of returning to the US Senate. Not good may be kind. As you all know the only way that Norm Coleman can hope to win in the Election Court Contest is by somehow finding more votes to be included in the count and than receiving a large enough proportion of those votes once their opened to overtake Al Franken's 225+ vote lead.

Well, the universe of ballots in which Coleman hopes to find more votes continued it's gradual contraction when the Secretary of State announced the results of the sorting of pile 3 ballots. Pile 3 ballots were rejected because the voter wasn't registered, these were being opened to see if the voter had placed the registration form in the secrecy envelope instead of the outer envelope.

Out of over 1500 ballots about 89 might be counted.

I say about 89 because there is some discrepancy on the exact number, 88 has also been reported, and I say might be counted because they still have to meet all of the other legal standards for absentee ballots, like the voter didn't vote in person on election day.

VoteForAmerica has a run down of these ballots by county, the long and short of it is that they are likely to be about a wash.

The only apparent good news for the Coleman team lately was the MN Supreme courts rejection of Al Franken's request for a temporary election certificate. But even this was bad news. While denying Franken's request the court also stated that they, the MN Supreme Court, are the "court of proper jurisdiction" cited in MN election law as having the final determination on the contest. In other words, you won't get to appeal to the US Supreme Court Normie.

Seemingly every day that goes by brings more bad news for Norm Coleman and I couldn't think of a more deserving fella.