Updated 5:50 p.m. with Republican court response

An extraordinary request to exclude Republican nominee Donald Trump from the Minnesota ballot sparked sharp words Friday and a swift timetable for the Minnesota Supreme Court to consider the Democratic petition.

At least 1 million Minnesota ballots have already been printed, according to one legal filing.

DFL Party Chair Ken Martin and his lawyers urged Trump's removal from the ballot in a filing Thursday, arguing that state Republicans didn't follow the law for submitting his candidate paperwork. Republican Party Chair Keith Downey shot back that the case was frivolous.

“Donald Trump got on our ballot fair and square, and it is outrageous that the Democrat Party would actually try to rig the election this way,” Downey said in a written statement. “It sure smells bad when the Democrat Party petitions the Democrat Secretary of State to remove the Republican candidate from the presidential ballot."

Unlike minor-party candidates, the two major parties have relatively little to do to get their candidates on the ballot. Republicans and Democrats had until late August to provide names of the nominee and a running mate, along with 10 electors who would cast votes after the election if that party's nominee wins.

They also had to supply the names of 10 alternates. The law says the electors and alternates have to be chosen at state party conventions. The Republicans forgot to appoint alternates at the state convention, and party leaders made emergency selections just before filing in August.

Trump's Minnesota campaign director, Andy Post, said the Democratic request would punish Minnesota voters.

"We are focused on campaigning while state Democrats are focused on preventing Minnesotans from having a vote," Post said in a written statement.

Nationally-known scholars in election law said courts are reluctant to go as far as the Democrats want here.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine and moderator of an election law blog, said that "courts should bend over backwards in reading rules to provide voters with a meaningful choice on Election Day."

The Democratic legal team includes a pair of prominent national attorneys -- Elias and Hamilton -- who steered Sen. Al Franken and Gov. Mark Dayton's successful recount efforts in 2008 and 2010 respectively.

The Supreme Court gave the political parties little time in this case to make their arguments, setting a Friday afternoon deadline for submissions.

The Republican Party challenged both the basis and timing of the ballot challenge. Attorney Richard Morgan wrote the protest was lodged too late and the remedy the Democrats are after was too extreme.

"It is difficult to imagine a more extraordinary, broad and unjustified remedy than turning Minnesota into a one-party state for the presidential election because of alleged errors in the state Republican Party's method for choosing its electors," Morgan wrote.

In their filing, DFL Party lawyers disputed the idea that their case should be tossed because too much time lapsed between the discovery of the problem and the filing of a case. They said the case was filed nine business days after the candidate deadline arrived.

"Petitioner thus could not file this action without conducting substantial research to verify the legal basis of his claim. Over the Labor Day holiday weekend and early this week, petitioner prepared the petition," lawyers Marc Elias, Kevin Hamilton and David Zoll wrote.

They added, "Thus, while petitioner appreciates that time is necessarily tight in election litigation, he respectfully submits that he acted sufficiently promptly to allow consideration of the merits of this dispute."

In their own legal brief, the office of Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon advised justices that a decision by Monday is essential to prevent ballot-printing problems.

Simon's lawyers told the court that at least one million ballots were been printed already, and some counties have begun sending ballots to state residents temporarily stationed overseas. General absentee voting, both by mail and in-person, begins Sept. 23. Simon's filing said the extra time is needed to redesign and reprint ballots if needed.

A Trump-free ballot would leave eight candidates, including Clinton, for voters to choose from.

Clinton is favored in Minnesota, given the state's Democratic-leaning in presidential election and results of the little polling that's been done here to date. Trump's presence on the ballot is expected to help some Republicans down-ticket but hurt others.

But not having him there, some operatives said, could lessen the motivation for Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to get to the polls if they feel Clinton has it in the bag. Some said it could even cause a backlash by feeding into Trump's refrain that the playing field is tilted.