Franken holds a 225-vote lead after a hand recount of ballots cast in November. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested Friday that Coleman’s fight to hold on to his Minnesota Senate seat may still be in its nascent stages.
“This could end up in federal court based on the allegations of the Coleman campaign that there has not been a consistent manner of counting votes county by county,” McConnell said. “I don’t know where this ends.”
Asked if he would encourage Coleman to take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, McConnell said, “I would until we know who won.”
McConnell also wouldn’t say whether he’d support a revote in the race, saying, "All this will be decided in Minnesota, not up here."
McConnell’s comments came at a wide-ranging breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. McConnell said that Coleman’s team seems to have been laying the groundwork for a federal appeals challenge by citing the 2000 Supreme Court case in Bush v. Gore, which ended the Florida recount. McConnell argued that the equal protection clause of the Constitution ensures that each county should use similar standards in counting its ballots, which the Coleman campaign asserts was not done in Minnesota.
“We all remember Bush v. Gore,” McConnell said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090313/pl_politico/19974