Guest blogged by Jim Cirile

One of the more closely watched Senate contests is still undecided as of 11:30 PM Pacific time--Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman in Minnesota. Right now CNN.com is showing them in a statistical dead heat with 42% of the vote each with 94% of precincts reporting. However, at this moment Franken is behind by... 72 votes. That's right--72. Just minutes ago with 93% reporting, Franken was down by 6,500 votes.

As Brad notes during his broadcast on NovaM Radio tonight, Franken was the only Air America Radio host who never wanted Brad on his show, as he was apparently completely disinterested in election integrity issues. So it should be interesting to see if Franken changes his tune if the numbers remain this close. If Franken loses by two votes, perhaps he'll realize the importance of counting every vote. Of course, we hope Franken pulls it out. But right now it's a squeaker! Stand by...

UPDATE 11:40pm PT Franken now trails by 1,200 votes but the race is still statistically tied.

UPDATE 11:55pm PT Franken down by 1,400 with 95% reporting. But: a caller just reported that the New York Times website was reporting that exit polls had Franken ahead by 12%--that data has now been scrubbed. Election integrity experts, have at it. Even if Franken wouldn't stick up for election integrity, we shall stand up for him--and the voters in Minnesota. More on this to come, I'm sure.

UPDATE FROM DES, 11/5/08, 9:40am PT: The Associated Press announced this morning they are 'un-calling' the race they had previously rushed to call in favor of Coleman:

Franken has, wisely, not conceded. More from Brad on all of this, no doubt, when he's able to get caught back up from out of the prevailing whirlwinds...

UPDATE 11/5/08 9:02pm PT: More details on the race, and the flawed op-scanners used to 'count' it now here...

Guest Blogged by Jim Cirile

As of this minute CNN is projecting 207 electoral votes for Obama and 135 for McCain. 270 is the magic number to win. Once Obama scores California's 55 electoral votes, that puts him at 262--8 votes away. In other words, California plus pretty much any other state (okay, almost) and Obama wins.

Can McCain still pull this out?

We're watching with trepidation as McCain's numbers have been creeping upwards while Obama has been holding steady at 207 for some time. Of course, here on the West Coast the polls haven't even closed yet. But still, we here at The BRAD BLOG know from experience not to count our proverbial chickens. Frankly, I can't see how Mac can pull it out. But if there's a will, there's a way, and there certainly is a lot of will on the part of those who would do anything to keep the military industrial complex fully funded.

CNN also projects the Democrats now have 54 seats in the Senate, with another ten still in play. In the House, Dems have won 133 seats to 83 for the Republicans.

More breaking news to come, stand by...

Guest blogged by Jim Cirile

Into each life some rain must fall, only in the case of Senator Addison "Mitch" McConnell, we're talking a force 5 tropical storm. Republican Senate leader McConnell's seat was considered in play and was high on the Dems' wish list--not only because a win in Kentucky would get them very close to the magic filibuster-proof 60 votes, but because McConnell was a filibuster-happy Bush loyalist, crushing Democratic initiatives in their tracks (note to filibuster-petrified Democrats--you can learn a thing or two from Mitch. Filibusters--they're not just for Republicans anymore.)

McConnell survives to be a big ol' flat tire on (what will hopefully be the) Obama administration, stifling investigations, chipping away at what's left of the US Constitution and ensuring the money continues to flow into the military industrial complex. Sigh.

Working on a number of troubling stories today, so for the moment, here's a much welcome :30 second comedy diversion for you and me both...

The following report, of another Obama vote lost, comes from Nashville (Davidson County, TN), as did the similar one last week. ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines failing again, harming Democrats each time. The same machines are failing in one county and state after another, are still in use, haven't been impounded, and voters still do not get to vote on paper ballots.

The "thousands of attorneys" from Obama and the DNC are still completely AWOL. [Note: See update at bottom of story.]

From the Tennessean...

Have we mentioned that the "thousands of attorneys" from Obama and the DNC are still completely AWOL?

Quick links to our previous coverage, of similar incidents, in at least three other states, follows --- along with a quick list from experts about what you need to do (since Obama and the DNC apparently won't) when/if you have a similar problem with a touch-screen voting machine...

While John McCain has not yet had his literal "Great Portending Republican Fall" yet (it should be due any moment), this video certainly counts as a John McCain Campaign Classic. High-larious. Watch the confused folks behind him when he screws up his punchline (:34 seconds)...

We suspect this video will rank right up there in history with Bush's "...Can't get fooled again" and this already-classic photo from this year's final Presidential Debate.

And speaking of GOP voter registration hucksters, it looks like Nathan Sproul of Sproul & Associates, the group accused of destroying Democratic registrations in several states during previous elections, has been hired by the McCain-Palin campaign and the RNC again this year. Knock us over with a feather...

Hopefully, soon will come the GOP's ACORN "voter fraud" fraud backlash, though I realize that's still very much a hope given the continuous rightwing media's full-throated reporting attempt to punk American democracy in regards this issue.

Palm Beach Post, thankfully, bothered to do some actual reporting yesterday, and led with the following good news:

The story goes on to quote FL Secretary of State Kurt Browning who says: "'we have not seen a persistent problem across the state of Florida' with registration fraud by ACORN or other groups."

And FL's Republican Governor Charlie Crist who says: "There's some who sort of enjoy chaos. That's kind of what's going on more than fraud."

Bingo, Charlie. And rather ironic, given the outrageous statement John McCain made during last night's debate; the GOP's own far-worse-than-ACORN's record of registration form problems in California; Crist's own record of voter purges in his own state; and the Republican Party's dismal history of trying to use ACORN at the last minute, just before elections, in order to wreak the "chaos" that Crist was referring to...

Yes, the photo is real. From Reuters, at the end of last night's debate. John Aravosis has a caption contest going on.

Depending on how things go on November 4th, this photo may eventually serve history as the perfect encapsulation of the entirety of the 2008 general election campaign, methinks.

McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis accidentally said something accurate in his otherwise wholly misleading and disingenous statement issued yesterday:

Yup. So please put country first, for a change, and knock it off, Rick. Thanks!

(See our "GOP ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Lie" special coverage page for more details if you need 'em.)

For the last time this year, in theory, a Presidential Debate open thread. Share your thoughts during and after in comments below.

I'll be on WBAI/Pacifica (99.5FM in NYC, streaming here) right after the debate, for post-game analysis. Listen in, if ya like. Will try to follow comments here even while on air...

POST-DEBATE UPDATE: ACORN issues a fairly scathing press release in response to McCain's comments about them group during tonight's debate. Their statement follows below...

Last week we reported that voters in one New York county were receiving absentee ballots with "Barack OSAMA" listed as the Democratic Presidential candidate running against John McCain. This week, the beat goes on in Virginia, but in this case, it's not a typo (as the officials in NY claimed about their "Osama" ballots.)

The Republican Party of Virginia has sent absentee ballot request mailers to voters in the state, seeming to compare Barack Obama to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinijead, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

"In today's dangerous world, appeasement is not a foreign policy," declares the outside of the mailer from the Republican Party of Virginia, followed by photographs of the four leaders and the text "America must face the threat of terror head-on" on the inside.

On the back of the envelope used to send in the voter's absentee ballot request is a photo of what some Virginia voters, understandably, believe to be Obama's eyes, with the words "America must look evil in the eye and never flinch."

The complete mailer, with more of the pages and images than we show below, can be downloaded here as a PDF.

Decide for yourself, and note the additional graphic, now added as an update, comparing Osama to Obama (and calling for the latter to be waterboarded) as found on the Sacramento County, CA Republican Party's website...

-- Brad Friedman

So where's the "voter fraud"?

Fox "News" and its Rupert Murdoch-owned print brethren, the New York Post, continue to bang the GOP's phony ACORN "voter fraud" drum, but as far as I can tell, they've failed to come up with a single incident of any actual voter fraud committed by the dastardly "left-wing extremists."

Yes, Ann Coulter has committed felony voter fraud, but neither of the Murdoch outfits has yet to note that point, even while they go wall-to-wall with misleading reports claiming that ACORN is committing massive "voter fraud" on behalf of the Democrats.

So, as it's now been revealed that John McCain himself was a keynote speaker at a 2006 ACORN rally (on immigration reform) in Florida, where he declared to the ACORN volunteers in the room that they are "What makes America special," and as I've been going back and forth with commenters on my "Republican Voter Fraud Hoax" piece at the UK's Guardian (which today has shot up to one of their most read items), still, nobody seems to be able to show me an instance of any actual voter fraud committed by ACORN, or even anybody who registered via ACORN, for that matter.

Those who wish to believe in the hoax, however, attempt to link to article after article about allegations of voter fraud carried out by ACORN. And yet, the articles themselves --- if one bothers to actually read them --- reveal that either 1) They describe allegations and investigations brought by Republican agents, with little or no evidence of any wrong doing, and certainly no "voter fraud," 2) Where voter registration fraud has occurred it has been by rogue ACORN employees, originally reported to authorities by ACORN themselves (who are the actual victims of any such fraud by their employees), or 3) Smoke and mirrors are used to cloud the fact that not a single fraudulent vote has actually been cast by anyone.

Let's take a look at just two recent, oft-linked, oft-quoted New York Post articles from today and last week to give you an idea of how the scam works, and how the rightwing suckers fall for it. Every time...

Golly, for a group that's committed so much "voter fraud" for so long (if you're gullible enough to believe the lies that RNC/FNC has been telling you) it's mighty strange that, as News One notes, "McCain attended an ACORN convention just two years ago."

The once-honorable Republican's campaign has even seen fit to produce a video smear ad, attempting to tar Obama with "associations" with ACORN, and alleging the group has committed "massive voter fraud" to boot! (They've yet to produce any actual evidence for that, unfortunately.)

But more than just attending the ACORN-sponsored February 2006 rally, ACORN confirms in a statement today that McCain was actually the keynote speaker!

So now, they wonder, why it is that McCain seems to have "lost that loving feeling"?

"It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans. Maybe it is out of desperation that Senator McCain has forgotten that he was for ACORN before he was against ACORN," noted Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer of ACORN.

"We expected Senator McCain to support our efforts to give voice to millions of Americans who have never participated in an election before," she continued. "We are surprised at his efforts to vilify an organization that, until recently, he saw as an ally."

Hmmm...So, why was John McCain "palling around with" an organization that "has violated more Americans' civil rights to have their votes counted than any group since the KKK," as described by noted Florida 'vote-rigger' and McCain surrogate Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff)? Or was Feeney speaking out of school? If so, we've yet to hear McCain condemning the outrageous remarks, or distancing himself from Feeney, the three time winner of CREW's "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" Award.

Also, we can't help but wonder, in regard to McCain's meeting with ACORN, where he spoke on immigration reform, by the way...were there were any preconditions before he agreed to meet with them?

Special Coverage of the GOP's ACORN "Voter Fraud" Scam right here...

Now updated below with video of McCain's appearance, when he tells the ACORN crowd: "What makes America special is what's in this room tonight."...

As Josh Marshall notes, in his must-read take on the video clips at right from a McCain rally yesterday, it's "Weird. Sad. Surreal."

"There's something else to note too," writes Marshall. "Over the last 48 hours several name brand Republicans have come out and either chided or denounced McCain's borderline incitement. And given how taboo it is to level such criticism of your own nominee at this stage of the election you have to assume these criticisms were only the tip of the iceberg, with a far more intense and angry barrage of criticism voiced privately."

"[L]look at the facial expressions. McCain looks down as he says it and has the countenance of someone who been forced to tell someone else they're sorry," he continues.

"I get from his expression a sense of a man that is, in addition to all the other things he's angry about, is frustrated or angry at the situation he's gotten himself into. But he has sown the wind and now he's reaping the whirlwind."