A late press conference by Coakley today claims election tampering. They claim five people stepped forward claiming to have pre-marked ballots for Scott Brown at the polls. This is the sort of complaint a campaign usually makes early enough in the day to drive their voters’ turnout up. 6 p.m. is awfully late.

Is the Coakley camp hoping for a close race that, if necessary, they could get into Massachusetts’s notoriously partisan court system?