Posted on Sat, Nov. 02, 2002 story:PUB_DESC

BY HANK SHAW Pioneer Press

Pray for a landslide.

A big win in the U.S. Senate race — by any candidate — may be the only way to avoid a Florida-like legal meltdown in the days and weeks following Tuesday's election.

Both Republicans and Democrats are quietly positioning themselves for potential election lawsuits, should the contest between Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate Walter Mondale be decided by just a few thousand votes.

Minnesota has had several such squeaker elections before — the recount for one of them lasted five months. The presence of Independence Party candidate Jim Moore and the Green Party's Ray Tricomo could tighten the race at the top even further.

On Friday, Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Mike Erlandson said "no part of me wants to be back in the courts," but did he not rule out a lawsuit over election results. And Republican lawyers in Washington said privately they'll catch the first plane to St. Paul should a suit arise.

The worst fear of all sides — who would rather not spend months wrangling over the results of Minnesota's Senate race — is for one candidate or another to win narrowly.

Should that happen, at least two scenarios could arise that might lead to legal action:

• If Coleman wins by, say, 5,000 votes but there are more than 5,000 absentee votes cast for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone — highly likely considering there were 14,000 "wasted" votes cast in a similar situation during the 1990 governor's race — the DFL or some other group might sue. One possible rationale: before the Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday ordered counties to issue new absentee ballots, some had refused.

Does such differential treatment violate the Constitution? It might require a court battle to find out.

But even then it would be tough for anyone to convince the court that a Wellstone vote should count as a Mondale vote. Legal experts say that presumes too much.

• In another scenario, if Coleman wins by a small number of votes — and then a larger number of absentee ballots arrive at county election offices the day after the election — someone might sue, DFL chief Erlandson said. He did not say it would be the DFL, however.

"Different people have a different sense of that," Erlandson said. "I think people will have a hard time with that, especially if it makes the difference."

Could those late absentee ballots then be counted, a la Florida? Probably not, because unlike Florida, Minnesota has very clear laws banning this practice.

Nonetheless, legal experts say the courts have the power to craft extraordinary remedies in extreme situations. It would no doubt take a high court case to decide.

ODDS OF A CHALLENGE

Chances are legal teams will not have to parachute into the Twin Cities after Tuesday's election. The vast majority of statewide elections are decided by tens of thousands of votes.

Even Wellstone's upset win over Rudy Boschwitz in 1990—the closest statewide election in years—was by more than 47,000 votes.

But closer races can and do happen.

Mondale, Wellstone's replacement, carried Minnesota by only 3,800 votes when he ran for president against Ronald Reagan in 1984. And Republican presidential candidate Charles Hughes carried the state over Woodrow Wilson in 1916 by just 389 votes.

Neither case swung the election, but the 1962 governor's race between Karl Rolvaag and Elmer L. Anderson hinged on just 58 votes. That remains the closest statewide election in Minnesota history. A repeat would be a fiasco for both parties. The recount for the Rolvaag-Anderson race and its accompanying legal fights took more than five months. Rolvaag wasn't declared the winner until March.

"I hope this doesn't get that close," said University of Minnesota historian Hyman Berman. "It could spark a constitutional crisis that might not be as bad as Florida, but it's still something I don't want to live through."

Political observers are waiting with bated breath for the results, which should not arrive until early Wednesday morning because all ballots must be hand-counted.

"I think everybody who understands this situation is nervous," said University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs. "The potential for a protracted legal battle is looming."

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2002