Coleman Reverses On Tossing Counted Ballots, But Too Late For Some Ballots

Making an about face from previous statements that it would not ask for previously counted absentee ballots to be thrown out, the Norm Coleman campaign today requested an injunction to preserve the connection between the ballots and the envelopes they came in which would allow the campaign to have some of them thrown out.

The Coleman campaign says that 100 of those previously counted 933 ballots were "illegal" under last Friday's ruling from the three judge panel that is hearing the election contest suit Coleman filed after a recount showed Al Franken was leading in the US Senate race by 225 votes.  The ruling from the panel indicated certain categories of absentee ballot irregularities would not be considered for counting in the contest.

The ballots in question were marked during the recount with a number that matched the envelopes they came in.  The envelopes contain the information necessary to determine if the ballot had been properly cast.  Minnesota Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann told The UpTake this morning that most of the work on removing those numbers from the ballots and the envelopes had already been completed.  He said he had not seen the request from the Coleman campaign yet.

After speaking with us he asked the workers who were redacting the information to stop and discovered that they had not gotten as far as he thought they had.  This afternoon he told us that the ID numbers on only half of the ballots had been redacted.