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COLEMAN FOR U.S. SENATE PRESS RELEASE: “COLEMAN CAMPAIGN: SECRETARY OF STATE & FRANKEN CAMPAIGN SHOULD FOLLOW AGREEMENT ON REJECTED ABSENTEE BALLOTS”
By Michael B. Brodkorb | December 31, 2008
ST. PAUL – With the current process for sorting rejected absentee ballots sure to provide an unreliable result, the Coleman for Senate campaign today sent a letter to the Secretary of State’s office and the Franken campaign asking that the parties adhere to their prior agreement on these ballots. Currently, there is no uniform standard and the parties are not operating under any agreement, as order to by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
From the letter sent by Coleman recount attorney Tony Trimble:
“All of us have spent countless hours reviewing in excess of 12,000 absentee ballot envelopes. By Christmas Eve an agreement (the ‘Protocol’) was produced expressly requiring the Franken and Coleman campaigns to submit two (2) cooperatively-prepared lists to the Secretary of State and the county/city election officials: (i) one list specifying absentee ballot envelopes to be opened and counted, and (ii) another list specifying absentee ballot envelopes remaining in dispute. (Section 11 and Section 15 of Protocol). The required lists have not resulted.
“Instead, a subtle form of political guerilla warfare has arisen. Confusing and inconsistent directives and demands have confounded our county/city election officials. Differing standards of acceptance and rejection has resulted, and will multiply today and Friday unless changed now. Inconsistent ballot review and counting is the injury suffered by Minnesota and our voters. The blatant and baseless wholesale rejection of ballots for political gain is what we are seeing now, and it is not what we are supposed to be doing under the Supreme Court’s order.
“Presently, the fates of more than 2,000 votes are at risk and ‘in play’. We should all stop what we’re doing and wisely play by the rules we all adopted in order to achieve a valid election result. In order to achieve the consistency demanded by the Supreme Court and deserved by Minnesotans, we propose that: the envelopes and supporting materials for any and all absentee ballots identified by the Franken campaign, the Coleman campaign, the Secretary of State and the county and local election officials be sent to the Secretary of State’s office by Friday. At that time, the campaigns and the Secretary of State will review the materials and determine pursuant to the Supreme Court’s order which absentee ballots were indeed wrongly rejected. Those ballots will then be counted by the Canvassing Board at its scheduled meeting.â€
A copy of the letter is attached [click here].
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2 Responses to “COLEMAN FOR U.S. SENATE PRESS RELEASE: “COLEMAN CAMPAIGN: SECRETARY OF STATE & FRANKEN CAMPAIGN SHOULD FOLLOW AGREEMENT ON REJECTED ABSENTEE BALLOTS””
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January 1st, 2009 at 9:40 AM
The Franken campaign is just following the new playbook:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123068520570944301.html
January 1st, 2009 at 2:56 PM
All Senator Coleman supporters can do is hope that the 650 or so additional ballots are added to the final pile and out of the whole pile left of wrongfully rejected absentee ballots included must be a significant higher rate of military domestic and absentee ballots in contrast to the statewide military absentee ballot ratio cast. These ballots have by far the highest rate of rejection and the office of Secretary of state has actually worked on making sure more of these ballots aren’t thrown out. I couldn’t find the rejection rate for 2006 for Military ballots but mentioned in a official paper online it mentioned if I recall correctly that only 6,000 military ballots passed. Like I said I don’t know how many total were past just that it was deemed a major problem. Maybe someone has an accurate estimation on how many military votes were cast in 2008.