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As wild as it seemed, the fluctuation of the tally last week in the Franken-Coleman U.S. Senate contest wasn’t your father’s vote roller coaster. Comparing hour-by-hour graphs from the early hours of two tight Minnesota election battles shows how in 1962 the gubernatorial election results toyed with an even tie, while 2008’s senatorial showdown was more a steady descent to a 200-vote gap.

The Minnesota Independent wants to hear your Election Day stories! Did you witness long lines? Voter challenges? A remarkable tale from a polling place? DROP US A COMMENT BELOW. Or let us know in other ways: Email us your photos or stories, send us a Tweet or give us a ring: 612.245.1434. Help us cover this historic election and your story may appear at the Minnesota Independent, on our Twitter feed or our Flickr site.

Nigel Parry wasn’t arrested, harassed or gassed during the RNC. But he was affected.

At the Tilsner Artists’ Cooperative, where he’s lived on and off over the years, he shared a room a friend was renting out to people working for Indy Media and the Glass Bead Collective. “I spent the week with extremely freaked out and justifiably paranoid independent media people.”

He was getting “fog of war” reports all week. It was difficult to get the big picture — it still is.

So Parry — a songwriter, photojournalist, and web designer — started a paper archive of everything that happened outside the Xcel. “I printed everything from Star Tribune reports to St. Paul City Council minutes.”

Two items from yesterday make reappearances in today’s edition: The editor/publisher of the Rocky Mountain News responds to criticism about a reporter who liveblogged a toddler’s funeral on Twitter, and the Star Tribune’s Teamster drivers declare contract concessions “null and void.”

A round-up of media, new and old: YouTube partners with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to give a $10,000 reporting prize, while the Star Tribune’s Teamsters again vote down contract concessions. Also: Outrage over a newspaper liveblogging a funeral and key context as the Strib’s Katherine Kersten again targets a Muslim school.

Today’s media round-up: The Secret Service warned mainstream media sources about alleged threats against them by RNC protesters (this independent media site didn’t get such tips). A look at how Twitter served as the “police scanner of the 21st century newsroom.” And more.

Republican nominee John McCain took many people by surprise when he presented first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on Aug. 29. Media organizations, political junkies and even the campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama were sent scrambling to find information on the 44-year-old governor. While reporters were booking flights for Anchorage and [...]

The group of law enforcement agencies charged with handling security during the Republican National Convention had $50 million to spend on weapons and equipment. Riot police were dressed in black body armor from head to toe, equipped with advanced communications systems and the latest in crowd-control weaponry. However, the greatest advancement in the age-old grudge [...]

When CNN began reporting the selection of Sen. Joseph Biden as Sen. Barack Obama’s running-mate based on a “flurry of activity” at Biden’s home, many people — those who’d signed up to receive an exclusive text message about Obama’s choice — were perplexed. Widely hailed as a tech-savvy campaign move, the execution of the Obama campaign’s running-mate announcement via text message left the candidate open to criticism, but little came.

MinMon’s Tom Elko shot photos at the Obama rally in St. Paul, while Molly Priesmeyer and Paul Schmelzer tweeted the proceedings.

Update: Read a transcript of Obama’s historic speech.