The upshot of Coleman’s case — which has been rejected by the three-judge election-contest panel — is that the panel should disregard the requirements of Minnesota’s absentee-ballot statute because some local officials around the state did so on Election Day. I personally have not found that an argument that is likely to carry the day.
It’s an argument that the equal-protection clause imposes a lowest-common-denominator standard under the circumstances. I wrote about the issue as it is framed in the litigation most recently over the weekend in “Uncount every vote!”
For a smart and sympathetic treatment of the issues raised by Senator Coleman in David’s post, see Professor Edward Foley’s “An extra equal protection thought: Local policy or local mistakes?”