UPDATES: OH Sec. of State's results website goes down; Comes back up; Rove backs off; Romney finally concedes...
By Brad Friedman on 11/6/2012, 8:29pm PT  

From the front page of the Fox "News" website...

That said...Fox' Chris Wallace just reported he heard from the Romney campaign "who is unhappy with us for calling Ohio for Barack Obama". Karl Rove makes a case that Romney can still win Ohio, says the call by Fox is "premature". In a trip to the Fox 'News' "Decision Desk" room, Megyn Kelly is told by their statistician that there aren't enough votes out there for Romney to win. The "Decision Desk" says they are "99.95%" certain.

And then...

* * *

UPDATE 8:53pm PT: The Ohio Secretary of State's Election Night Results website is now down. Echo of 2004 when it also went down right around right now?...

UPDATE 9:14pm PT: OH Sec. of State's Results server is still down, though the rest of the site is up and working fine. The same thing is also true for Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), OH's website, which is working, but it's Election Results server is not...

UPDATE 9:30pm PT: The OH Sec. of State's server comes back up, shows Obama leading by 70k. And, as it does, Rove seems to suddenly back down and Fox "News" announces that Romney will, in fact, concede shortly...

UPDATE 11/9/12: Just for posterity's sake, below is an edited-down version of the 20 minutes or so during which Rove held Fox "News", and the rest of the nation, "hostage" on Election Night. Not clearly included in the cut below is the moment when Fox came back from break (as the OH Sec. of State's Election Night Results System was nearly simultaneously restored, as noted above) and Chris Wallace and Rove laughed off the momentary distraction, without even really referencing it, before moving on to the next point of discussion...

It should also be noted that during Rove's --- moment, or whatever we should call it, as seen below --- calls for Obama in several other states (CO and VA, as I recall) put him over the magic 270 number of electoral votes needed to win re-election. So, by that point, whatever may have been going on in Rove's brain or in Ohio, no longer mattered or could have made a difference in Mitt Romney somehow winning the election.



* * *
Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation, with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

Share article...