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Coleman balks at many rejected absentees
Senator Norm Coleman's team of lawyers is balking, at least for now, at 563 rejected absentee ballots that local election officials say were rejected by mistake and should have been counted on Election Day. Democrat Al Franken's campaign, on the other hand, has agreed to accept all 1,350 ballots that local election officials say were disqualified due to administrative errors. "These are local officials at counties all across the state who've decided these voters were erroneously rejected," Franken attorney David Lillehaug told reporters, "So we're willing to accept their judgment on that." Senator Coleman's campaign accused Franken's camp of rushing the process, and suggested Franken's strategy of accepting all the rejected votes was self-serving. But Lillehaug pointed out that the list of ballots came from 75 of the 87 counties, and that Franken only won in 24 of those counties. When the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed to allow some rejected absentee ballots to be opened and counted, it was on the condition that all three entities -- the local election officials and both campaigns -- signed off on those individual ballots. Those ballots are still sealed in individual envelopes, so exactly how those disqualified voters voted is still unknown. The Franken campaign on Saturday agreed to allow the State Canvassing Board to open and count all 1,350 ballots identified by local election officials as rejected in error. Early Monday morning the Coleman campaign had agreed to sign off on only 133 ballots, or roughly only 10 percent of those wrongfully rejected absentees. That number increased throughout the day, and may rise even more. "It depends on what we see when we examine those ballots," Coleman campaign attorney Tony Trimble said Monday afternoon. In the meantime the Coleman camp is moved to open up 657 rejected absentee ballots that were never classified as "wrongfully" or mistakenly rejected. "We have some reason to believe that some counties might have rejected certain ballots differently to others, and it just bears a visual inspection, a very quick visual inspection to make sure that hasn't occurred," Coleman attorney Tony Trimble said. Monday's chain of events sets into motion a series of 12 regional meetings over the next three days, designed to allow the campaigns to sift through the list of wrongfully rejected absentee ballots in an effort to reach agreement on which will be counted. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann cautioned Trimble during a meeting Monday that an attempt to place 657 new ballots under consideration would slow down the process, and make it tougher for election officials to keep to the the time line laid out by the Supreme Court. "The concern is a logistics concern," Gelbmann said, "There's going to be a lot of people traveling considerable distances and having to pack up all the materials that relate to those ballots." "You're giving the local officials very little time to check those individuals to make sure that they haven't voted already," he added." That's a reference to the fact that some absentees were rejected because the voters in question changed their minds and voted in person on election day. When that happens the voter's original absentee is automatically rejected to prevent them from voting twice. The absentees can also be rejected if a voter's not registered, no longer lives at the address on the application, fails to sign the ballot application, has a signature that doesn't match the one on file with the county, or lacks the proper witness signature on that application. Gelbmann sent the two campaigns an e-mail later Monday pointing out that the rules they agreed to the previous week gave both campaigns until 3pm Monday to give the all the counties a list of ballots they contend were wrongfully tossed out, and Coleman's new batch of requests did not go to those counties. The Coleman campaign reacted to that message with a news release at 10:20pm Monday accusing the Secretary of State's office of disenfranchising thousands of absentee voters, by not agreeing to placing that new group into consideration. Coleman's campaign attorney Fritz Knaak told reporters Monday afternoon that the Franken campaign should be interested in exploring all votes now targeted by Coleman, but is in a hurry to wrap up the process now that the Democrat's in the lead. "Franken's campaign isn't interested in counting all ballots," he said, "They're interested in counting all Franken ballots." But Franken's lawyer Lillehaug labeled the newest twist an attempt by the trailing campaign to throw a wrench in the works. "It was a surprise that the campaign that has fought all along the way to stop erroneously rejected absentee ballots now, at the 11th hour, all of a sudden came up with 657 absentee ballots that they now think should be counted." The overwhelming bulk of those new ballots are from rural and suburban areas where Coleman outperformed Franken during the election. Dakota County alone accounts for 121 of the rejected ballots Coleman's campaign wants to see live again. Lillehaug added, "Norm Coleman is losing on the recount so they had to come up with some kind of hale Mary pass, and this appears to be it." Franken leads Coleman by an estimated 46 votes after the statewide hand recount of 2.9 million ballots cast on Election Day, and the State Canvassing Board is scheduled to reach a consensus Tuesday making that lead official. Knaak originally led the charge publicly to keep all of the rejected absentee ballots off the scoreboard, pointing out that there's no legal precedent for counting votes that weren't opened on Election Day. Now he's looking to resurrect a cache of absentee ballots that local officials say were rightfully turned away on Election Day. "We've said from the start that if you're going to allow any of these ballots in the process should be accurate and consistent," he explained Monday, "And that's what we're aiming for now." Regional Meetings Set Duluth Bemidji Rochester Willmar Elk River Anoka Hastings Buffalo Mankato Fergus Falls Brainerd Crookston Bemidji Saint Paul
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