Senate GOP threatens to block Franken from being seated

By GottaLaff

UPDATE:

[D]oes Coleman have a realistic chance of winning an election contest? Probably not. [...]

[I]n order to win Coleman would need to sweep every last argument, denying Franken a favorable resolution on any single thing. That is highly unlikely to happen. But it sure could take a while to sort everything out.

H/t: SeattleDan

Here's the latest on the Big Minnesota Showdown:

Al Franken (D) now holds a 50 vote lead over US Senator Norm Coleman (R). Close to 1350 previously rejected absentee ballots are currently being reviewed, but both sides expect those to widen Franken's current lead. US Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) suggested on Tuesday that the Senate should provisionally seat Franken in January, subject to the outcome of any litigation expected to be filed by Coleman.

The US Senate Republicans issued a sharply worded response: "Al Franken is falsely declaring victory based on an artificial lead created on the back of the double counting of ballots. His campaign's actions in the last several days on the issues of rejected absentee ballots are creating additional chaos and disorder in the Minnesota recount. Those actions, coupled with the recent comments by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who suggests seating someone even if there is an election contest, are unprecedented. Minnesotans will not accept a recount in which some votes are counted twice, and I expect the Senate would have a problem seating a candidate who has not duly won an election." Stay tuned to see who -- if anyone -- is seated on January 5. Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) has previously said he would consider appointing an interim caretaker to fill the seat until the election outcome is resolved.

Here's Nate the Great (whose post title is "Franken May be Ceding Ground on Absentee Ballots") from Five Thirty Eight's take:

For the time being, however, they seem inclined to play it cool and maintain the moral highground, perhaps believing that they'll have a strong argument on Equal Protection grounds if they need to contest the election later on.

From my vantage point, Franken could possibly have played his hand more strongly on Monday, once it became clear that the Coleman campaign was making no pretense whatsoever of attempting to establish an objective, statewide standard for the counting of absentees, essentially just cherry-picking ballots and daring the Franken campaign to call them on it. The result of that process was that no statewide standards were agreed upon, enabling either campaign to apply different standards across different counties.

The upshot of all of this is that Franken probably now has grounds to contest the election if at any point he falls behind, either after the vote is certified or, as is somewhat more likely, following a successful Coleman challenge on the question of duplicate ballots.