franken-coleman-court.thumbnail.jpgAs expected, the Franken legal has filed a Motion to Dismiss the Coleman contest in its entirety.  From the opening: 

After five weeks of trial, the Court has now heard the entirety of Contestant’s affirmative case. This has consisted of testimony from a handful of voters who attempted to vote for Coleman, as well as election officials, primarily from jurisdictions that heavily favored Coleman. Even without the presentation of Contestee’s rebuttal case and counterclaims, it has become clear that the bulk of Contestant’s claims fail as a matter of law.  For example, despite the many weeks of testimony, Contestants have failed to meet their burden of proving that a voter’s absentee ballot was improperly rejected with respect to the vast majority of ballots they challenge. With respect to many of Contestant’s other claims – such as that ballots were mutilated and that challenged ballots were improperly rejected or accepted by the State Canvassing Board – they have failed to provide any evidence at all.

The bad news is that Franken’s motion will likely be denied, as the Election Contest Court doesn’t want to give the Coleman side anything on which to base an appeal to the Federal courts system.  The good news is that this twenty-nine-page motion is so tightly constructed that the ECC will likely base a good chunk of its case ruling on the points laid down therein.  It sets forth all the elements of proof, then goes ballot by ballot on each element, ending up with nine ballots that had some evidence on each  element, in a rather impressive display.

Let’s compare the public statements by Coleman spokesman Ben Ginsberg, a man who pulled his petition to be allowed to represent Norm Coleman in a Minnesota courtroom, and Franken attorney Marc Elias.  So far, it’s not been heavily emphasized, or even mentioned much, in the traditional media that attorneys who are officially representing their clients in court are held to much higher standards of conduct than guys like Ginsberg with their storyboards in the hallway.   The upshot:  When Marc Elias says something, it has to be something he wouldn’t mind saying in court before a judge, or he’s in big trouble; on the other hand, Ben Ginsberg could say in one of his presscons that the members of the Election Contest Court are really lizard people in disguise and very likely get away with it.  

With all that in mind, let’s analyze some recent tweets from The UpTake concerning statements made this morning by Elias and Ginsburg:

#1:  Elias says Team Coleman universe is 1078 but number of proven ballots less than 400

#2:   Elias continues: in fact the number of FULLY proven Coleman ballots numbers in the "dozens"

#3:   Ginsberg says Coleman still has 2000 ballots were they have submitted enough evidence to get them in #mncontest

#4:  Ginsberg says only small holes in Coleman evidence remain from delayed counties. Also counting offers of proof as evidentiary.

If you need a little help, consider these words posted yesterday at DailyKos from a local commenter who knows the Minnesota courtroom scene: 

Scuttlebut at the courthouse yesterday (from someone deep inside the Coleman legal team) is that they realize that they are being completely manhandled, and that the Franken resources are dramatically better than Colemans.  They recognize that they lost this case during the recount when they did not see the forest for the trees.  The smartest thing that Franken did was bring in lawyers immediately that had done this type of statewide recount before and understood how each decision in the recount would later affect the recount.  They stragically outmanuevered Coleman’s team from day one.  The most interesting comment made is that Coleman’s side concedes that Franken’s side knows what is in each ballot.  They know that Elias’s numbers are dead on, if Elias says they believe that out of 800 ballots, the spread between the parties will increase by 15 ballots, you can take that to the bank.

There you go.