Franken and Sotomayor are now in a kind of do-si-do dance in which Franken expects to take the lead.

The Minnesota Supreme Court hears oral arguments in former Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) election-contest appeal on June 1, with a decision expected within two or three weeks.

That decision could include specific instructions to issue an election certificate that the winner needs to be seated in the Senate, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has said he’ll abide by the state high court’s decision. But Pawlenty has also signaled he might delay issuing an election certificate until federal courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have cleared any subsequent case Coleman might file.

In that event, Sotomayor could conceivably be seated in the U.S. Supreme Court in time to pass judgment on Franken’s prospects for a new job in Washington, D.C., rather than the other way around.

Here is Franken’s full statement:

I want to congratulate Judge Sotomayor on her history-making nomination to the Supreme Court. Confirming a Supreme Court Justice is among the most important responsibilities the Senate has, and I take that responsibility very seriously. I look forward to joining my colleagues as we examine Judge Sotomayor’s qualifications carefully before confirmation. However, it is already clear that President Obama has chosen a remarkable jurist with an impressive record of accomplishment and a life story with which working families can identify.

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Chris Steller is a reporter for TWI’s sister site, The Minnesota Independent.

The ruling meets two standards that Ohio State University professor Edward Foley had set for the panel: unanimity and a willingness to grapple with whether local variations in applying state election processes violated Minnesotans’ constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Foley stresses the impartiality of the ruling — as compared to, say, Bush v. Gore in 2000, on which Coleman’s claim of equal protection violations relied:

There is no doubt … that this three-judge court would have rejected the same Equal Protection claim if raised by Franken rather than Coleman.

Loyola Law School professor Rich Hasen doesn’t use the word “impartial” but he does call the ruling “careful, unanimous,” “reasonable and conservative,” and  ”detailed and measured.”

On equal protection, Hasen writes that the three-judge panel “has it both ways” — calling the issue outside the court’s scope but also rejecting it with “impressive and sensitive handling”:

As I predicted, they rejected a reading of the case that would require the counting of further illegal votes to deal with any illegal votes that had already been cast, and they rejected an argument that any lack of perfection in the casting and counting of votes constitutes a violation of equal protection.

Coleman’s equal protection argument is “not trivial,” writes Guy Charles, a University of Minnesota law professor temporarily teaching at Duke University:

But as judges and legal academics like to say, that argument proves too much … Unfortunately for Coleman, his prospects always depended upon a miracle. He wanted before and wants now more ballots to be counted. But the more ballots that are counted — by election officials, the Canvassing Board and the trial court — the better Al Franken does.

“It’s over,” Charles advises Coleman on his post-election legal battle. “It’s Kumbaya time.”

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Chris Steller is a reporter for TWI’s sister site, The Minnesota Independent.

But Franken didn’t respond to reporters’ shouted questions about exactly when he would go to Washington and retreated up the front steps of his downtown Minneapolis townhouse with his wife, Frannie, and campaign aides.

In a brief statement in which he twice referred to his “victory,” Franken also acknowledged just how close his 225-vote margin of victory over former Sen. Norm Coleman was. “I didn’t win the support of every Minnesotan. I’m going to have to earn it,” he said. “I work for you now and I will work hard to earn your confidence.”

Franken paid tribute to Coleman with a note of sympathy that recalled former Minnesota Gov. Karl Rolvaag’s statement after the state’s last big recount in 1962. ”I know that this isn’t easy” for the Colemans, Franken said, because his own family had faced tough days since the election. But he described the recount process as “long, fair and … thorough.”

With a nod toward threats of lawsuits and filibusters, Franken said he hoped Minnesota would continue to be served by two senators “without interruption.” Whatever happens on that score, Franken said he would “focus all my attention and all my energies” on working on issues facing Minnesotans — including an economy he said was in the “worst crisis since the Great Depression.”

Franken’s appearance was one of a very few he’s made since Election Day, and his statement included offerings of thanks to staff, supporters and others that “I wish I’d been able to give on Election Night.” He also thanked election workers in a state that he said had shown the world it “takes its democracy seriously.”

As Franken ended with a pledge to get to work, a woman passerby who had stopped to listen shouted out, “Yeah, get on the job!” From the tone of her voice, it wasn’t entirely clear whether she was a Franken fan, a Coleman backer or simply another citizen ready for the recount to end.

Chris Steller is a reporter at TWI’s sister site, The Minnesota Independent.

In its order, the court wrote that “the threshold question before us in this motion is whether disputes over rejected absentee ballots can be resolved in this automatic recount proceeding, or whether they must await an election contest proceeding.”

Only “obvious errors in the counting or recording of the votes” that all sides could agree on, the court said, should be fixed in the recount that the canvassing board will certify today. All other disputes belong in a court action called an election contest that either side may file within seven days of certification.

That reasoning goes some way to explain an aspect of the court’s Dec. 18 ruling (pdf) that has since been roundly criticized: a provision allowing the Franken and Coleman campaigns to remove from the recount even those absentee ballots that election officials decide should have been included on Election Day.

“[W]here election officials and the parties agree that an absentee ballot was improperly rejected, correction of that error should not have to await an election contest. We therefore ordered that any absentee ballot envelope that local election officials and the candidates agree was rejected in error should be opened and its ballot counted, subject to challenge by either candidate. In doing so, we implicitly recognized that any agreement among the parties was voluntary and, absent such an agreement, resolution of those disputed ballots would need to await an election contest proceeding.”

The order today carried the signature of Associate Justice Alan Page — who was first in line to criticize the court’s Dec. 18 order with a blistering dissent. As with earlier recount issues, the two members of the court who are currently serving on the State Canvassing Board — Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson — did not take part in considering or deciding the question. All legal filings before the court related to the recount are available online.

Chris Steller is a reporter for TWI’s sister site, The Minnesota Independent.

The shelf life of the candidates’ ballot challenges, however, is limited. There’s a Dec. 5 deadline for counties to complete their recount responsibilities and a Dec. 16 date for the State Canvassing Board to begin aggregating the counties’ handiwork, including the critical task of sorting out the challenged ballots.

In the meantime, the State Canvassing Board may also decide what, if anything, it will do about examining an estimated 12,000 rejected absentee ballots for legitimate votes that should have been counted.

Most counties are finished with their recounts, but some have yet to start. On Tuesday only the large Minneapolis-St. Paul counties of Hennepin and Ramsey, along with Dodge County, had recounting scheduled, according to The Uptake, which closely tracks counties’ efforts. On Wednesday four counties begin their recounts. (When to start is up to local officials to decide, as long as they meet Friday’s deadline.)

Recount duties grew somewhat more complex today when Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie asked county auditors via email to sort rejected absentee ballots into separate piles according to reason for rejection (or lack thereof), according to an update issued by the Franken campaign. Ritchie’s new instructions complicate the process for handling absentee ballots after his office last week strove to simplify the overall recount by asking the Coleman and Franken campaigns to rein in their ballot challenges by Wednesday evening. Both campaigns say they’ll withdraw some challenges. But exactly how many ballot challenges either side foregoes to satisfy Ritchie will likely depend on how many challenges the other side appears willing to drop.