Al Franken, the former Saturday Night Live comedian who is locked in a tight Senate race in Minnesota against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, sued Thursday to gain access to lists of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected by election officials in counties across the state.
Franken’s campaign wants to review the lists to ensure that individuals whose ballots were rejected were truly ineligible to vote. The lawsuit was filed in Ramsey County District Court.
Franken trails Coleman by 206 votes, out of nearly 3 million ballots cast, according to unofficial results released by Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.
A recount is scheduled to begin next week, which will drag on through December and a winner will likely not be declared until mid-December, Ritchie said.
Last week, Franken’s campaign unsuccessfully tried to get Hennepin County to include in the vote tally 461 absentee ballots that were rejected.
Mark Elias, an attorney working for the Franken campaign on the recount, said the “the only way we can ensure people were not disenfranchised is to check the lists.”
Elias said if the Franken campaign confirms that if some voters whose absentee ballots were discarded were in fact eligible to vote the state Canvassing Board should include those ballots in the recount.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported Wednesday that the Canvassing Board is made up of “a cast of heavy-hitters topped by Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, a former law partner of Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, three other high-ranking judges and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie… who made the selections Wednesday.”
“The freshly appointed state Canvassing Board will be charged with certifying vote totals Tuesday and, more important, settling differences over disputed ballots once local officials complete their recount,” the Star-Tribune reported.
At a news conference Thursday at Franken’s campaign headquarters, Elias said he learned that an 84-year-old woman had her absentee ballot rejected because her signature did not match a registration card she signed prior to suffering a stroke.
“The state may not devise a regime where a woman, because she had a stroke, does not have the right to vote,” Elias said at the news conference.
Ritchie said this week that absentee ballots that have already been rejected won’t be reconsidered when the recount begins.
In the past, Franken has dismissed evidence of voter suppression and other election integrity issues as conspiracy theory.
But after last Tuesday’s election his stance on the issue shifted.
He said his campaign was looking into “irregularities”, including some polling places in Minneapolis that “some polling places…ran out of registration materials.”
“Our office and the Obama campaign have received reports of irregularities at various precincts around the state,” Franken said in a statement.
Franken has more than 1,000 lawyers working for him to monitor the recount that will take place in 87 counties.
Franken was running behind in the race by a little more than 700 votes last week. He quickly cut into Coleman’s lead last Wednesday, gaining 200 vote, when election officials in Buhl realized they hadn’t immediately submitted results from the election.
Franken scored another 100 votes last Thursday when an election official in Pine County mistakenly typed in “24″ instead of “124″ for Franken.
But Coleman’s campaign manager Cullen Sheehan has been suspicious of the turn of events that have turned out in Franken’s favor.
“We are now seeing huge chunks of votes appearing and disappearing – statistically dubious and improbable shifts that are overwhelmingly accruing to the benefit of Al Franken,” Sheehan said.
Last week, 32 absentee ballots turned up in a heavily Democratic county of Minneapolis that threatened to further shrink Coleman’s lead.
Coleman’s campaign tried to stop the ballots from being counted by asking a Ramsey County court judge to issue a restraining order stating that the integrity of the ballots may have been jeopardized.
The judge denied the request on jurisdictional grounds. A city attorney issued a letter stating that the election official did not tamper with the absentee ballots.
Coleman’s campaign has also demanded to see documents from county and state officials to help explain why and how election results changed since Tuesday.
The Associated Press reported Friday that more than 25,000 ballots in Minnesota counties that voted for Barack Obama did not register a vote for either Coleman or Franken, which could be explained by a misreading of ballots by the state’s optical scan voting machines.
“Though some voters may have intentionally bypassed the race, others may have mismarked their ballot or optical scanning machines may have misread them, the AP reported. “A recount to begin Nov. 19 will use manual inspection to detect such ballots.
The Associated Press declared Coleman the winner early Wednesday, but hours later the wire service “uncalled” the race.
“There’s one more critical statistic: About 8,900 people weren’t recorded as voting for president, according to county-by-county turnout estimates kept by the Secretary of State’s Office,” the AP report said.
“That nearly 9,000 people would skip the closely watched race is questionable, raising the possibility that as many as 33,700 ballots might be subject to change in a hand recount. What recount teams will be looking for is whether stray or light marks on ballots signaled a voter’s preference.”
