Posted: January 2, 2009

Minnesota Supreme Court orders responses due by 9am tomorrow

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered all parties to file any responses to Coleman’s petition by tomorrow at 9 a.m. The counties must also inform the court as to whether they considered additional ballots suggested for inclusion by either of the campaigns and their reasons if they declined to consider additional ballots. See the order here.  Minnesota law will not allow the governor to issue a certificate of election while election contest suits are pending making it unlikely that a Senator will be seated by January 6. The campaigns are expected to have agreed to the inclusion of about 900 absentee ballots of the 1,346 identified by local officials as wrongly rejected when counting begins tomorrow. However, the Minnesota Supreme Court could revisit the standard for determining which ballots to include. Some, including Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, have questioned the Court’s earlier decision to turn over the decision of whether a voter’s ballot may count to the campaigns. Voters themselves can challenge the rejection of their ballot in the state Supreme Court but it will likely be too late for any that were wrongly rejected by the officials or either of the campaigns to be included in the state canvass. See the Star Tribune coverage here.