Republican Norm Coleman held a conference call this morning on the legal victory his campaign scored yesterday before the three-judge panel hearing his contest of the results of the Minnesota Senate election. Coleman, who trails by 225 votes in the official count, will now be able to present evidence that 4,797 rejected absentee ballots should be counted.

Coleman had actually asked the court to consider more than 10,000 rejected ballots. His rival, Democrat Al Franken, had hoped to limit that universe of reconsidered ballots to 650. The possibility of more than 4,000 votes being added to the current totals gives hope to Coleman and extends the process of deciding an election that was held three months ago.

“Reports of my defeat and Al Franken’s victory are greatly exaggerated and greatly premature,” said Coleman.

The ballots in question were excluded for a variety of reasons, in some cases because of election workers’ errors. In other cases, the law’s requirements appear to have been met. For example, some voters may have signed their ballots as required, but in the wrong place. If a large number of ballots are accepted into the count, Coleman could erase Franken’s lead and claim victory.

There are no guarantees that the votes in question will help Coleman. In fact, Franken’s lead could grow when they are counted. Coleman said that if that happens, he will concede. But he added that other previously disallowed ballots which were included in the last recount were so heavily Democratic that this batch will probably lean toward him. “This was not about us cherry-picking ballots from just Republican areas,” he said. “But to tell the truth, the ballots that came in before . . . were from areas that were overwhelmingly Democrat. And so the ballots remaining are far more Republican, because the rest of the universe is already in.”

Coleman also expressed hope that the court would rule in his favor on another issue, regarding whether some precincts accidentally double-counted votes for Franken because of a mix-up with duplicate ballots that had been created to represent originals. In some precincts, there were many more votes than there had been voters who signed in. “We still believe there are a net 80 to 100 votes in the Franken column that will be washed away when the court gets done with them–that they were votes that were double-counted,” said Coleman. If the court finds for Coleman on this issue, he will have a smaller margin to overcome with the absentee ballots.

Coleman was also asked about threats from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) not to seat Coleman, should he prove victorious after the election contest. Reid told the Politico a month ago that

“Norm Coleman will never ever serve [again] in the Senate.”

Coleman’s answer: “Are you sure he wasn’t talking about Roland Burris? I think he said the same thing about him.” Coleman said that Reid’s comments about Burris proved to be “foolish” in retrospect.

Ben Ginsberg, Coleman’s counsel, expressed confidence that the Senate would seat Coleman as long as Minnesota officials certify him the winner, as the Burris precedent dictates. “The precedent in the Senate is that if there’s a validly signed certificate of election, they seat the senator,” said Ginsberg.