mr. friedberg, i see you have reserved 10 minutes for a bottle -- for rebuttal? >> good morning, and may it please the court. my name is joe friedberg. let me begin by saying that minnesota is quite different from many states. we have problems within our institutions, and when we do, we deal with them candidly and openly. we do not minimize them or sweep them under the rug to be discovered later by a federal court as in 1983 litigation. that is like finding the fact 47 of the trial court is so surprising. announcing the we are proud of rejecting only 0.5% of our total ballots cast in november he is misleading at best. the only ballots to get rejected are absentee ballots. our officials rejected 4% of them. 12,000 citizens who made good faith efforts to vote where disenfranchised for a variety. >> these 12,000 citizens, did they comply with the absentee voter requirements? >> many of them did substantially, your honor, many of them did. >> "substantially." what does that mean? >> well, we define substantially as within the criteria adopted by the election judges i