Just for those of you who don't know, a party typically has an unconditional right to appeal to a state appellate court. However, the state supreme court has discretion with what cases it decides to hear. Typically they take a very small percentage of the cases that try to appeal (typically something like 1 out of 30-100 depending on the state).
Senate recount trial: Judges' ruling is boon to Franken
Absentee ballots to be counted will be far fewer than Coleman sought in effort to close the U.S. Senate gap.
Norm Coleman's lawyers all but conceded defeat Tuesday and promised to appeal after a panel of three judges ordered no more than 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than the Republican had sought to overcome the lead held by DFLer Al Franken.
The ballots include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened in his quest to overcome the 225-vote lead that Franken gained after a recount in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race.
"We are very pleased," said Franken lead lawyer Marc Elias shortly after the ruling, which calls for ballots to be opened next week.
Coleman legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg acknowledged that the Republican may have lost the seven-week trial and was prepared to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
"It is pretty much of a long shot with that few ballots being put in play," Ginsberg said, comparing the Republican's odds of winning the trial to someone betting on the winning team in the NCAA basketball tournament. "We are disappointed. But we feel the court is wrong and we will appeal."
The ruling is not a final order and it's not clear for which candidate the ballots were cast. About half of them came from Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis Counties, which went heavily for Franken in the election. But about 61 percent of the 400 ballots are from Republican-leaning suburbs of Hennepin County or counties that broke for Coleman.
The three-judge panel ordered the ballots delivered to the Secretary of State's Office by April 6 and those deemed legal to be opened and counted April 7 in the Supreme Court room at the Minnesota Judicial Center.
The judges emphasized that fewer than the 400 absentee ballots might be counted if some of them are deemed ineligible upon further examination. "To be clear, not every absentee ballot identified in this order will ultimately be opened and counted," the panel wrote.
Some of the ballots lacked documentation needed for the panel to make an immediate finding.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
