Minnesota to Be without 2nd Senator at Least through June 1st
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Related subjects: J.E. Robertson, Judicial Rulings, Rights & Freedoms, The Vote, U.S. Elections, U.S. Law, U.S. Politics, Vote 2008 Comments (3)
The Minnesota Supreme Court has agreed to hear Norm Coleman’s appeal of the ruling in which a 3-judge panel ordered the state to certify Al Franken as the winner in the November 2008 election. The date set for that hearing is 1 June 2009, meaning Minnesota may continue without its 2nd senator for another 5 weeks. Coleman had been ordered to pay court costs and the ruling had been issued not only unanimously, but “with prejudice”. The Republican governor of the state has not yet acceded to the Court’s order.
According to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:
The schedule, set by the five justices who will hear Coleman’s appeal, appears to hew more closely to his proposed schedule than the quicker one proposed by Franken.
Coleman must file his brief in the case no later than next Thursday; Franken has until May 11 to do so.
Coleman then has until May 15 to file his reply brief.
Franken has also requested at least $16,132 from Coleman, a move that stems from Coleman’s attorney’s allegedly not fully disclosing witness testimony. Based in part on the strict position taken by the 3-judge panel in the recent ruling finding he won, and in anticipation that the grounds for appeal are slim for Coleman, Franken has reportedly begun hiring staff, so that he can begin to serve in the Senate upon determination of the validity of the ruling in his favor.
While some Republicans have called this presumptuous, the Franken camp wants to be ready to begin serving without delay, as the state of Minnesota will have gone without full Congressional representation for at least 6 months when the ruling is made in June. AOL News’ Political Machine notes that:
Although Franken has won every stage of the six-month old election contest with Republican Norm Coleman, he still does not have the certification of Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty, which is required before Franken can proceed to the Senate.
Pawlenty has pledged not to certify the election tally unless and until Norm Coleman has exhausted every available legal channel by which to challenge Franken’s victory. This could, of course, bring Pawlenty under fire for putting party before public service should the process continue to drag on and should the subsequent legal challenges yield little to no new information about the vote.
For his part, Norm Coleman —who angrily demanded that Franken concede defeat while the state was undergoing a recount mandated by law, back before the New Year, and while the incomplete tally showed Coleman ahead by just 200 votes— has not ruled out filing a federal civil rights lawsuit to challenge the results on Constitutional “equal protection” grounds. That could drag the case on for months or years and lead to the awkward situation of the Supreme Court of the United States finding the opposite of what it found in 2000, when its ruling on similar grounds brought George Bush to the White House.
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