Ben Ginsberg, spokesman for former Sen. Norm Coleman (R, Minn.), held a conference call this afternoon to discuss Coleman’s expected appeal of his election challenge to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The appeal will probably be filed this week, he said.

Ginsberg ridiculed the lower court’s decision for what he considered its cavalier treatment of equal-protection claims, and also for its refusal to examine closely the question of whether votes were double-counted. “The court didn’t want to go to the trouble of doing the inspection, to see what was accurate,” said Ginsberg. He said he expected a more favorable ruling from the state Supreme Court.

Coleman will try to get the Supreme Court to count as many as possible of 4,800 absentee ballots that have been disallowed for various reasons. So far, the result of his election challenge has been to increase his vote deficit to 312 from 225 votes behind Al Franken (D).