Norm Coleman came to Washington, D.C., yesterday to talk with colleagues and reporters about his efforts to hold onto his Senate seat in an election contest--a legal proceeding, set to kick off January 26, in which a three-judge panel will determine which candidate got the most votes. "I think our chances of winning are better than pulling an inside straight," Coleman told me at the beginning of an interview at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "We have a good shot at this thing."
His reference to an "inside straight" was implicit criticism of my assessment of his odds of overtaking Al Franken's 225 vote lead in an election contest. While the contest involves a number of different disputes over how votes were counted, Coleman believes that if two issues are resolved in his favor, he'll overcome Franken's lead and be re-elected. First, Coleman believes that Franken's lead will be cut down to somewhere between 110 and 125 votes if double-counted votes are excluded from the count.
Second, Coleman believes that if 5,000 rejected absentee ballots are included in the final count, he'll erase the rest of Franken's lead.
About 12,000 absentee ballots were rejected and went uncounted on Election Day, but both campaigns and local election officials have already identified as improperly rejected and counted about about 950 of those absentee ballots. Franken ran up a surprising 20 point margin among these 950 ballots, which came from counties where Franken was only favored slightly.
"We've identified over 5,000 ballots we think ... based on the standard we admitted these 950 something, that we think will be entered," he said. "Can you make up 115 votes? I gotta believe you can."
Coleman's case for including these 5,000 rejected ballots rests on an equal protection argument. There have been reports that different counties used different standards to count these 950 absentee ballots. A senior Coleman campaign adviser tells me that, for example, in some counties some absentee ballots lacking a signature on the envelope--which is required by Minnesota law--were counted. Since these votes have already been mixed into the count, the only way to have a uniform standard is to count other ballots that lacked a signature on the back of the ballot envelope as well.
So are Coleman's chances of winning better than I previously reported? Maybe. Even if thousands of more ballots are included in the final count, there's no way to know if they'll break in Coleman's favor. And we'll first have to see if Coleman's equal protection argument passes muster. He may have his work cut out for him in front of three judges who were selected by a liberal Minnesota supreme court justice. Coleman declined to say whether he would be open to appealing the three judge panel's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. "I'm firmly convinced if we get a fair resolution of the handling of absentee ballots and a fair resolution to the double counting, then there's no need to bring it to a higher level," he said.
Coleman says he hopes to get the election contest "done quickly, hopefully in the next month." In the meantime, he's taken up work as a consultant for the Republican Jewish Coalition to pay the bills. He was adamant that he would only do "policy-related" work "not lobbying". He's also been busy tying up loose ends on his constituent cases. Though Majority Leader Harry Reid had Coleman's staff locked out of Senate offices a few weeks ago, he's now given them until February 4 to vacate.
"We have to pack up an office and place it somewhere with the hope and expectation that we're going to unpack it," Coleman said. "We're in this purgatory, this in between place right now."
