Franken Wins Senate Trail

Saint Paul, Minnesota
April 13, 2009
By Marty Owings

The three Judge Panel in the Coleman V. Franken trial ruled today that Al Franken is entitled to receive the election certificate based on its findings. The Coleman case has been "dismissed with prejudice" according the documents released by the Court in a unanimous 56-page opinion, with an additional 12 pages of supporting exhibits.

The Court said that Coleman failed to prove his case in all areas including absentee ballots, ballots counted twice or their "equal protection" issue in which the his lawyers contended that Minnesotans rights were violated.

Coleman's lawyers had attempted to prove the thousands of voters were "disenfranchised" by the actions of elections officials, that those same election officials counted ballots that should not have been counted, that some ballots were counted twice. All of these assertions were refuted by the Court in their findings of fact.

Perhaps the most critical claim for Coleman's case was that of "equal protection" in which his lawyers claimed that because of the inconsistency of vote counting that not all ballots were treated the same. The Court answered this by stating "Errors or irregularities identified by [Coleman] in the general election do not violate the mandates of equal protection.”

Coleman's lead attorney Ben Ginsberg responded to the Court decision in a statement, saying "More than 4,400 Minnesotans remain wrongly disenfranchised by this court's order. The court's ruling tonight is consistent with how they've ruled throughout this case but inconsistent with the Minnesota tradition of enfranchising voters. This order ignores the reality of what happened in the counties and cities on Election Day in terms of counting the votes. By its own terms, the court has included votes it has found to be 'illegal' in the contest to remain included in the final counts from Election Day, and equal protection and due process concerns have been ignored. For these reasons, we must appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court so that no voter is left behind." Ginsberg said he will appeal the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

For his part, Al Franken appeared outside his town home and spoke briefly to members of the media. “It’s long past time we got to work.” said Franken. He added “We didn’t fight hard simply because we wanted to win, “We fought hard because every Minnesotan knows someone who’s losing a job or a home, someone who’s struggling to pay for tuition or prescription drugs.”

The Court also ordered that Coleman pay for Franken's legal fees and that they pay $7500 fine for withholding evidence from the Franken attorneys. And finally the Court document states the following: "Accordingly, Coleman received a total of 1,212,317 votes and Franken received a total of 1,212,629 votes in the race for United States Senator in the November 4, 2008 general election … Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast … Franken is entitled to receive the certificate of election.”