When McCain said he was confident that he would win with a surge in the wee hours of November 5th during the final counting was there more truth in this statement than he was letting on? Two weeks ago, former Bush operative Karl Rove was confidently saying that John McCain could win ten battleground states to become President. Monday, the day before the election, Republican IT specialist Mike Connell, a Karl Rove protégé, was forced to testify in front of a Cleveland federal judge about a number of serious allegations with regards to hijacking vote results in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election. Interestingly, Karl Rove changed his tune after the testimony and said on the eve of the election that Barack Obama would win in a landslide.



Could cyber-attacks and manipulation of transmitted vote tallies still have occurred in Minnesota - like what was described during Mike Connell's testimony the day before - altering vote tallies in the Presidential and Senate elections as they were tabulated throughout the early morning hours of November 5th? Of course the Presidential election turned out to be a landslide and so attempts at fraud would have been overwhelmed by the lopsided victory for Barack Obama. However, the Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken was always expected to be very close. And these expectations did not disappoint. A neck and neck running vote tally occurred throughout the night with numerous lead changes and by Wednesday morning Norm Coleman had a slight lead of 762 votes in the uncertified results. This lead was however well within the guidelines of Minnesota election law dictating a recount by hand of the paper ballots if the final difference between candidates is within 0.5% of the total votes cast. In this case a 762 vote difference out of 2.9 million votes cast was a difference of only 0.01%, well within the designated 0.5% that would trigger an automatic recount.



Since Wednesday morning, a number of clerical errors and final vote tallies have created adjustments in the vote totals for both candidates and has made the race even tighter. Currently an unofficial tally of 221 votes separates Republican Norm Coleman and DFLer Al Franken. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said that adjustments in the days following the election are a normal part of the canvassing process. Counties must certify their results today, then send their results to the state by Friday. The state of Minnesota has until November 18th to certify the election. After this, the election recount will start and is expected to take a few weeks.



In the meantime the two competing campaigns have begun firing accusations at each other. One of the more serious accusations involves a Norm Coleman staffer that acted as a Somali translator on election day and at one point a GOP challenger and was accused of trying to illegally influence Somali voters at the polling place to cast votes for Norm Coleman. A very serious allegation if proven true.







(Image by Unknown Owner) Details DMCA



A blogger made the following post at 4:03 am:



"Both the MN sec. state and CNN have 98% in BUT:



CNN



Franken 1,188,975

Coleman 1,186,710



Sec. State

Franken 1,179,000

Coleman 1,185,993



Franken is missing almost 10,000 votes!"

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