Mar 11, 2009 6:17 am US/Eastern
Minn. Senate Battle Nearing End
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) ―
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Al Franken, Norm Coleman
Chip Somodevilla & Robin Beck / AFP/Getty Images
Minnesota's drawn-out Senate saga is about take another step toward conclusion.
Lawyers for Democrat Al Franken plan to call their final witnesses Wednesday and then provisionally rest their case. But that doesn't mean the seven-week trial is quite done.
A lawyer representing individual voters who are trying to get their rejected absentee ballots counted has the right to present evidence. And Republican Norm Coleman, who brought the election challenge, can put on witnesses to rebut Franken's case.
"We're not there yet because there are still those steps left," said Franken lawyer Marc Elias. "But we're ending what has been a very long post-election process."
Coleman lawyer Ben Ginsberg said the Coleman rebuttal case won't be "terribly lengthy." So barring unforeseen delays, the three judges could be deliberating by next week.
Franken led Coleman by 225 votes after a statewide recount. The Democrat's lawyers called 73 witnesses over the last week, mostly voters whose ballots were denied. Elias wouldn't estimate how many new votes he believes they have proven.
Coleman's team spent more than five weeks putting on a case aimed at proving thousands of absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and hundreds of votes improperly went to Franken due to vote-counting irregularities. Ginsberg said Coleman's attorneys have proven between 1,000 and 1,725 rejected ballots should now count, which is far fewer than the pool of votes they pursued when the trial began.
Once the judges determine which candidate got the most legal votes, the loser has the right to appeal to higher courts or the U.S. Senate.
One question that has come up repeatedly in recent days is absentee ballots in which a voter's signature appeared different from the one on their ballot application. Both sides have tried to convince the panel to reconsider ballots that were rejected because of apparent signature mismatches.
Coleman's lawyers have given the judges 168 such ballots to examine, and have more than 300 more they'd like to introduce. Franken's lawyers so far haven't said how many on those grounds they are trying to convert into votes.
The signature requirement is designed to guard against voter fraud by making sure the person casting the ballot is the one who requested it. Election officials compare a voter's signature on the envelope that contains the completed ballot to the signature on the ballot application.
It's one of the most discretionary aspects of Minnesota's election system. On occasions in court, the attorneys and those testifying pause to examine the markings on the signature lines.
Jason Okrzynski, a voter from Waconia, was unapologetic about his mismatch on the witness stand last week.
"I've been signing my name for about 27 years and I'm not sure I've signed it the same way once," he said.
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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