Here we go again, if Franken looses it has to be because GOP stole election...

Shades of 2000 as far as the accusations go:

With fewer than 200 votes now separating Minnesota Democrat Al Franken from embattled incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, it is now "almost a certainty" that Republicans will use the same tactics they employed in Florida in the wake of the 2000 presidential election to shutdown a recount that is slipping away from them, according to NoVoterLeftBehind.net (www.NoVoterLeftBehind.net), which is accepting donations and volunteers to fight back against the GOP efforts to steal the 2008 Minnesota Senate seat.

NoVoterLeftBehind.net Executive Director Jennifer Petty said that the organization will fight to keep the vote recount going in its current stage and right on through the hand-off to a nonpartisan panel of five persons, who will convene to decide the fate of challenged ballots.

With thousands of absentee ballots yet to be accounted for, Coleman's steadily shrinking lead is now down to under 200 votes out of 2.9 million -- a margin of under seven-thousandths of 1 percent.

Petty said: "NoVoterLeftBehind.net was founded by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the motto 'No more 2000s!' That battle cry for our group applies to both national and state-specific races. We know the kind of goon-squad tactics the Republicans used in 2000 to shut down the recount and deny the U.S. presidency to Al Gore. We need the help of concerned Democrats nationwide to make sure this doesn't happen again in Minnesota."

In particular, Petty said the group is keen to see the five-member Minnesota panel proceed without disruption from Republicans. After the election, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, named a canvassing board that includes himself, two state Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and two county judges. The board will settle differences over disputed ballots once local officials complete their recount. It is possible that the panel will have to weigh in on thousands of disputed ballots.

The reality is that the voting was close, on November 10th it was reported:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The margin in Minnesota’s unresolved Senate race has gotten tighter again in the latest figures reported to the secretary of state.

Republican incumbent Norm Coleman’s lead over Democrat Al Franken stands at 204 votes as of Monday morning. It had been 221 votes in tallies that are still considered unofficial.

The numbers have gone back and forth, on the 19th of November, it was reported:

By day's end, with about 18 percent of the vote recounted, Coleman continued to lead Franken -- but by only 174 votes, notably narrower than the unofficial gap of 215 votes at which the recount had begun. Franken's gain owed much to a swing of 23 votes in the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis County -- the result of faintly marked ballots and older optical scanners that failed to read the marks.

With the most recent update from 44 minutes ago being:

More than 78% of the votes had been recounted, and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's advantage over DFLer Al Franken stood at 210. But with 3,000-plus votes disputed, it's hard to know who is really gaining.

Anyone who has actually looked at some of the ballots that have been disputed can not say with a straight face that both the Franken and Coleman camp have made this process take longer. Some of the disputes on some of these ballots are stupid...

So let's cut to the chase, originally the unofficial tally on November 5th had Coleman up by 204 - now with the recount still happening he's at 210. This is evidence of how divided Minnesota was, not evidence of the GOP "stealing" an election...unless they really suck at election stealing because if they really were going to steal it? They should have done it in a better way to have avoided a recount.