mr. friedburg, you have reserved 10 minutes for rebuttal. you may receive -- proceed when you are ready. >> may it please the court, i represent -- let me begin by saying 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 don't minimize them or sweep them under the rug to be discovered by federal torrent. that is why finding that 47 of the trial court is so surprising. an ounce in we are proud of rejecting 0.5% of the total balance cast in november is misleading at best. the only ballots that did reject are absentee ballots. power officials rejected 4% of them. twelve thousand citizens who made good faith effort were disenfranchised. >> these 12,000 citizens comply with the absentee requirements. >> many of them did substantially. >> what does that mean? >> we define substantially as within the criteria adopted by the election counties across the state on the election night. >> haven't we said in the past that the requirements, the statutory require