John Aiken, director of communications for Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, said in an e-mail Tuesday that no factors so far point to any technical problems with the state's voting equipment that could have contributed to the ultra-slim margin between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger Al Franken.

So far, posted by the state show Coleman leading Franken by 206 votes out of more than 2.4 million ballots cast between the candidates. Coleman received 1,211,565 votes, or 41.99%, compared to 1,211,359 votes, or 41.98% for Franken, according to the unofficial state figures. Independent candidate Dean Barkley garnered 437,389 votes, or 15.16% of the votes, followed by a much smaller number of votes for several other independent candidates.

An of the close race found that about 25,000 more Minnesota voters made selections for presidential candidates than they did for U.S. Senate candidates, leading to questions over whether that vote gap meant there could have been a problem with the election equipment.

According to the analysis, "the nearly 25,000-vote difference in Minnesota presidential and U.S. Senate race tallies shows that most ballots lacking a recorded Senate vote were cast in counties won by ."

The AP report said it was possible that "some voters may have intentionally bypassed the race," while other voters may have mismarked their ballots or optical scanning machines may have misread them.