[Updated] Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s Web site is down, and the campaign says a flood of info-seeking disenfranchised voters overwhelmed it. A press release posted at the GOP blog Minnesota Democrats Exposed reports that the site was “inundated by tens of thousands of hits today – temporarily crashing the website.” MDE’s Ryan Flynn then quotes Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan (Fox 9 also published the release).

“Minnesotans and folks across the country are fed up with Al Franken’s efforts to disenfranchise thousands of Minnesota voters, and the overwhelming response we received to making this information public is proof positive of that fact,” he says.

But not so fast, says Aaron Landry, an MN Publius blogger (and Franken fan) who works as IT Manager at a St. Paul design firm by day. He commented at MDE that there’s “no way that the amount of traffic they got was the cause of the website being down.”

Then he did some digging. His conclusion: “This stunt is a completely fabricated lie.“

Two of the four points Landry makes in his post:

2. Their website has been configured to point at the IP address “1.1.1.1,” which goes nowhere. This isn’t a mistake. They also set the “time to live” on that for only 600 seconds, which means when they choose to switch it back, most servers should only take 10 minutes to refresh. It’s an intentional move so they can manage their timing of the switchover. Most records like this have a much longer time to live. In short, they have configured their website to intentionally point at nothing. This does not happen by mistake and it is clear what they are doing.

[...]

4. As the Coleman for Senate website is being pointed at 1.1.1.1, which goes nowhere, they have no way of tracking how many “hits” they are getting. They had to have made up the “thousands of hits” number because it is technically impossible to track traffic they aren’t receiving.

I left messages on the office voicemail and cellphone of Coleman’s press officer, Luke Friedrich, and called and e-mailed his backup, Tom Erickson. Should they reply, I’ll post what they have to say. I’m also getting in touch with IT experts who can weigh in on Landry’s claim.

Update: Tony Webster, a Minneapolis web developer, explained to me that the IP address the Coleman campaign used prior to today’s “crash” (208.42.168.197) is responsive. Translation: “If the site was truly down, that IP wouldn’t be responsive. If it wasn’t, their story might have validity. In fact, I can see their last blog post today. The title is ‘Senate Trial: Every ballot has a story.’ If the site was down, I wouldn’t see that at all.”

He says he can also see that the campaign has a Google Analytics account.

“If they wanted to be transparent, they could release those logs and graphs,” he said. “Since it’s a third-party source, they can’t modify the data. If they changed that DNS [to 1.1.1.1] to mitigate a problem, you should see it.”

Update: I called Tim Barsness listed as the technical contact for the site. The provided phone number rang to Coleman’s campaign office; while Barsness was not available, the unidentified man who answered the phone would say little, except to inform me that the problem was being worked on as we spoke — and to correct me: “The crash happened yesterday.” That assertion sets off a red flag for Tony Webster: If that’s true, why does he see two entries dated today? He took a screen grab of how the Coleman site’s HTML displays on-screen, taken directly from the site’s server:


[click to enlarge]

Still no response to my multiple messages left with Coleman representatives at 2 pm this afternoon.

Related: ‘Crashgate’ reveals unprotected donor database on Coleman’s site