The Election Contest Court has ruled that the remaining contested absentee ballots will be counted on April 7, starting at 9:30 am Central Time. Whoever is ahead at the end of the count will be declared the winner of the 2008 election for what used to be Norm Coleman’s (and Paul Wellstone’s) Senate seat. Norm will of course appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court (and will take his sweet time doing so — he has ten days to make his appeal), but it’s getting closer to the end here. Once the Minnesota Soops deep-six Norm, that’s it.

While we wait to see if the Election Contest Court has issued any rulings yet — or if Harry Reid is going to go ahead and seat Al Franken tomorrow without a certificate and dare John Cornyn to filibuster — we have this little bit of trivia left over from the tear-gassed remnants of the [...]

As we wait for the Election Contest Court to issue its ruling and for the final ballot-counting of this election and contest to be completed (Rachel Stassen-Berger has a good theoretical timeline), I understand that poor widdle John Cornyn is providing some comedy relief by doing his best Charlton Heston routine, threatening all sorts of calamity if Al Franken is seated. Whattaya gonna do, John, bleed on me?

The clock is ticking for Norm. Even as Governor Pawlenty is grudgingly recognizing that both the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Secretary of State’s office are going to interpret State law as allowing an election certificate to be issued once the state courts are done with any and all contests (which means that taking the case to the Federal level won’t stop the cert from being signed), the specter of Nasser Kazeminy has reappeared.

WineRev tips us off to this great piece by MinnPost’s Jay Weiner about a foine Oirish-American gent named Terry O’Toole, a longtime DFLer (the Minnesota brand of Democrat) and a living link to the time, not so long ago, when the Irish ruled Saint Paul. Said Mr. O’Toole, a broth of a boy at 87, was part of Karl Rolvaag’s campaign in 1962, when the closely-contested election and recount resulted in the election laws that govern the Franken-Coleman contest of the present day.

Norm Coleman, after months of going to the mattresses with his Hundred-Lawyer Horde and spinning this out well past the point where he should have given up because he has no hope of winning, has suddenly said that he doesn’t expect to take his election recount battle all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The biggest news of the week wasn’t in a courtroom, it was on a local sports-talk radio show. While we were all waiting for the Election Contest Court to render a ruling, Joe Friedberg, Norm Coleman’s lead trial attorney, told fellow high-powered local attorney Ron Rosenbaum what we already knew — that Norm doesn’t have a prayer.

MinnPost passes along Election Law Blog’s Rick Hasen’s verdict, as published at Slate, on Norm Coleman’s equal-protection claim: Namely, that it’s pretty weak. Well, duh. Longtime FDL commenter Sara, who was around when the case law behind the Minnesota recount was established back in the 1960s, could have told him that.

The Senate recount contest isn’t the only legal action Norm’s been involved in recently. MinnPost’s Cynthia Dizikes reminds us that the Kazeminy lawsuits are still very much out there and lying in wait for the former Senator Coleman once he’s done burning through his donors’ money here in Saint Paul. Speaking of which, is money the reason why has Norm been at the Election Contest Court every single day of the contest, pray tell? Perspiring minds want to know!

While we wait for the three-judge panel to render their rulings, here are some more tidbits on the election, the recount, and other related matters.