From Erika Bolstad in Washington D.C. --

Former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Wednesday that he thinks Joe Miller should give up his challenge to the Alaska Senate election.

Coleman knows a little something about challenging Senate election results: he contested the 2008 result in Minnesota for eight months before a state Supreme Court ruling against him forced him to concede to Democrat Al Franken.

"I understand his concern. But I'll just be very straightforward here. I think that race is over. The counting's been done. I'm not sure there's anything that would change that," Coleman told Steve Thomma of the McClatchy Washington Bureau today during a taped interview with C-SPAN's Newsmakers program. The show airs Sunday.

"At a certain point in time you have to have some finality in these things," Coleman says.

"Without criticizing Joe Miller, I would offer him advice. I think it's the same advice that Fred Thompson and others have offered recently. It should be time to move on."

Miller is contesting the 2010 election result in which he was apparently defeated by Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

"I understand Joe's frustration, I'm listening to what he's saying, he's saying well they didn't use the same standards. There were standards used to count ballots that weren’t counted on election night that are now being counted. I had some of those concerns in Minnesota in a much, much closer race," says Coleman, who is weighing a run for chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Coleman says he could have kept his challenge going even longer by taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He says he decided against that, and that Miller should do the same now, long before reaching that stage.

"There's not much that you can gain by extending the process. It's been extended," Coleman says.

"They’ve done now this count of absentee ballots, probably time to move on rather than him initiating another legal proceeding."