Wyclif,
This needs because of following scenarios,
1. Just load the page and enter any letter(s) and press ENTER. It's not searching for the Enter key but the default search. Reason is when page loads there are no results and the results table is hidden. So that condition becomes true.
2. Load the page and search some results. After load results, clear the text and again enter any letter(s) and press ENTER to search again. Same thing as previouse will happen.

Those are the reasons for this additional condition. Sorry if I'm misunderstand any point you are trying to showing me. Please put me in to right track if I'm going wrong.