Gee, and I thought nothing really interesting happened today.  See, the Election Contest Court was only officially in session for eighteen minutes before it adjourned, apparently because the judges didn’t want to see Coleman’s people waste time going over rightfully-rejected ballots one by one by one for hours on end.   However, it turns out that Team Coleman had other plans to give us amusement today:

Norm Coleman’s lawyers want judges in the U.S. Senate election trial to reverse their recent ruling and consider counting rejected absentee ballots similar to others that previously were tallied.

On Friday, the three-judge panel excluded 12 categories of rejected absentee ballots from reconsideration. But the Coleman legal team said Monday that those banished categories would have fit about 100 ballots that were accepted last month during the recount.

While the campaign could challenge the 100 accepted ballots, it would prefer that the panel allow similar ballots to be introduced in court and counted, said Coleman legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg.

Why are they doing this?  Because they have to overturn the ruling if they want to keep this case alive — or rather, keep alive their ability to delay Al Franken’s being seated as Minnesota’s newest Senator.  The ruling, among other things, shot down the Coleman camp’s efforts to use the ‘equal protection’ argument, the centerpiece of their election contest. 

And if anyone thinks the Election Contest Court is going to overturn this ruling — a ruling grounded in the study of existing Minnesota statutes — they have another think coming.  I imagine the ECC’s judges’ sides must be hurting from laughing so hard.  

(H/T to Julia for both the Strib piece and the title of this post.)