By Brad Friedman on 11/4/2014, 11:18pm PT  

While most of the media is reporting the huge Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate tonight, and the big GOP wins in a whole bunch of Governor's races, Reuters notices that there were a lot of problems for voters across the country today...

(Reuters) - Voting machine and voter identification problems emerged in some U.S. states on Tuesday when Americans went to the polls in midterm elections that will shape the final two years of Barack Obama's presidency.

Although a full picture of the problems was not yet clear, officials and voting rights advocates reported machine failures in North Carolina and Texas, polling breakdowns in a key Florida county and an overall increase in the number of people reporting they were turned away for lack of proper identification.

They go on to summarize election problems and failures in a bunch of states, most of which we covered in one form or another earlier today (including many more). But we missed this really bizarre case of still-unexplained very dirty tricks out of Chicago earlier today...

And in Chicago, more than 2,000 election judges --- a fifth of the total --- failed to show up at polling places after automated phone calls beginning on Saturday falsely informed them that they were unqualified without additional training.

Officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties in the city denied involvement in the calls, which an election board official said appeared to target a particular party that he declined to identify.

So, WTF is that about? Chicago's CBS affiliate has much more, reporting that election officials called "the severe shortage of judges 'much worse than ever before.' Some polling places had no election judges, or only one, when they were supposed to open at 6 a.m."

In the meantime, as elections were being targeted in the heavily Democratic stronghold of Chicago, the GOP reportedly went on to take control of the Governor's mansion in Illinois, with Republican Bruce Rauner claiming victory over incumbent Democratic incumbent Governor Pat Quinn.

Quinn, to his credit, refused to concede with the unverified computer-tallied results reported from 98% of state precincts, giving Rauner, who declared victory, a reported 51-46 point lead as of 11:30pm local time.

"I don't believe in throwing in the towel while votes are being counted," Quinn told supporters. "We will never yield until all the votes are in."

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