The Minnesota Senate race is getting closer to an end, and Norm Coleman probably won't win. A three-judge panel ruled on Tuesday that at most, 400 ballots questioned by Coleman, who is barely losing to Al Franken, can be recounted in court in about a week.

The news is great for Franken and Democrats, who are that much closer to getting 59 seats in the Senate, a very powerful number that can potentially dust off threats of Republican filibusters. But Coleman and the Republicans aren't giving up. They have raised millions of dollars to fuel the recount, delaying either senator from working on Capitol Hill.

Yet money may not be enough to win this legal battle stemming from Nov. 4, at least according to Coleman's lawyer, who suggested Tuesday that supernatural forces had something to do with the unfortunate rulings.

"We said that this court's Friday the 13th order is wrong, and now their almost April Fool's Day order is equally wrong," said attorney Ben Ginsberg, referring first to the February 13 ruling that discarded some ballot categories as grounds for recounting.

Obviously I'm no legal expert or scholar of law, but I don't think it's absurd to suggest that when the defense brings up scary bad-luck days like Friday the 13th or "almost April Fool's Day," its options may be running thin.

Ginsberg also said that if the court doesn't change its mind, "it will give us no choice but to appeal that order to the Minnesota Supreme Court." Will the Coleman campaign object to the high court's ruling if it falls on Memorial Day? Or the first night of Passover? What about Mother's Day?

The idea that somehow supernatural spirits or a national day of pranks are influencing the judges' decisions is, obviously, one that hasn't been academically explored very deeply. But don't rule out Coleman's defense just yet, because there is precedent for such a claim.

As elections neared in India a few weeks ago, for example, the main political parties agreed to suspend poll talks during Holi, a festival that celebrates practical jokes and even brings people together to toast a figure named "Mr. Stupid." And further, as the parties decided when to make a formal election announcement, Friday the 13th loomed -- but was brushed aside by a party official who told the Times of India, "We are not worried about the date. Friday the 13th is a Western concept; it will not harm us."

Although, another party leader said that on the day of Sankashti, "Lord Ganesha will turn Friday the 13th into an auspicious muhurtham [moment].''

For an older, yet American, perspective, take a look at Edward Stanwood's 1912 column called, "Election Superstitions and Fallacies," in which he notes that many myths circulate in the political world just as broken mirrors forecast a family member's death, even though causality cannot be proven. For example, before Ulysses Grant was reelected in 1872, people believed that no president with a middle name could be voted into office for a second term (John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison and James Knox Polk were all limited to single terms).

(It had also held true as a mystic notion at the time Stanwood wrote his article that no senator could ever become president.)

One more contemporary example: As some of you may know, John McCain carries around lucky coins. One of them, a penny, was given to him by the publisher of the the New Hampshire Union Leader, Joe McQuaid. When I interviewed McCain last year during the primaries, the Arizona senator assured me that he still carries around the one-cent piece, and told me to send that message to the editors at the Union Leader, for whom I was writing.

Do superstitions hold true? Maybe not. McCain did lose the election, three sitting senators have become president, commanders-in-chief with middle names have been re-elected, and even India's elections have had a share of anti-Muslim controversy.

Let's just hope the next phase of the Coleman-Franken recount doesn't wind up on Halloween.