Theyre open 24 hours so they can stay open every minute until early voting is done tomorrow night at 7 00 p. M. In texas. Were keeping an eye on those overnights tonight in texas this evening. Up in minnesota, a new Court Ruling Says the state will not be allowed to count any ballots that arrive in the mail after election day, even if they are po postmarked before election day. Now, that is a lastminute, really consequential rule change. Minnesotans had previously been told their votes would count if they were received up to a week after election day, but now, at the very last minute, this Appeals Court ruling tonight has changed that. And you can lament what that means in terms of this court decision. But bottom line, what it means for you, if you are in minnesota and you have your ballot at home . What this means for real is that you really, truly should not trust your ballot to the mail. You have to bring it in, in person. Drop it off yourself. Seriously. Again, minnesota, as of a court ruling tonight, changing the rules and no longer planning to accept any ballots that arrive after the polls close on election day. Control of the United States senate, of course, is very much on the table right now. The endangered incumbent republican senator, david perdue, in georgia, may very well lose his seat to his democratic challenger, jon ossoff, especially after a debate performance last night in which ossoff just wiped the floor with perdue and then left him laying there wet. I know you might have seen the one clip where ossoff tells david perdue to his face, its not just that youre a crook, senator. That moment will live forever in Senate Debate history. But it wasnt just that. It was more than that. This is so beneath the office of a u. S. Senator. Youve continued to demean yourself throughout this campaign with your conduct. First, you were lengthening my nose in attack ads to remind everybody that im jewish. Then when that didnt work, you started calling me some kind of islamic terrorist. And then when that didnt work, you started calling me a chinese communist. Its ridiculous, and you shouldnt do everything that your handlers in washington tell you to, because you lose your soul along the way, senator. What the people of georgia deserve is a serious discussion of Economic Relief for georgia families and how were going to protect coverage for preexisting conditions. Thank you 23for your perhaps senator perdue would have been able to respond effectively to the covid19 pandemic if you hadnt been pending off allegations of insider trading. Its not just that youre a crook, senator, its that youre attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say covid19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while, you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio, and you did vote four times to end protections for preexisting conditions. Four times. That was the georgia Senate Debate last night. Now, tonight, incumbent republican senator david perdue, the man who you can see here, carved out of soft soap on the left side of your screen, senator david perdue has announced tonight that he would please not like to debate democrat jon ossoff anymore. The candidates had a third and final debate scheduled for this weekend, but republican senator david perdue is now bailing on that, for all the obvious reasons. Now, what does this mean in terms of Senate Control . Well, its not a good sign for david perdue. That said, look at this. There have been, i think, 11 polls in that senate race conducted this month, in the month of october. Of those 11 polls, five of them show david perdue ahead, five of them show jon ossoff ahead, and the 11th one was a tie. So, yeah, georgia, oh, my lord, does your vote count this year. Georgia residents, get thee to the polls. Again, it is too late to trust your ballot to the u. S. Mail service. If youve got a ballot at home, bring it in. Whether or not you were planning on voting early, vote early. Just in case you didnt think it was high drama enough already around this election, right . I mean, its the president ial race, its the senate races, its everything, right, with huge numbers of early votes and the u. S. Mail no longer being a reliable way to get your ballot in at this late date, so everybody who still has a ballot now has to hand deliver it, and nobody knows how many people are going to be voting on election day. Really, truly, nobody knows that. And the courts all over the country are still changing the rules, even now, about whats going to be counted and what wont. I mean, man, just get your vote in now. Get it done. Honestly. I personally cant take the stress. Just get it done. And meanwhile meanwhile, heres the new crash point in todays news between two of the major sources of our National Anxiety right now, the safety and security of our election and the safety and health of us. Tuesday at noon, this is what the signin screen at canton potsdam hospital looked like. Signin service is unavailable. And over at gouffonor hospital, systems are down. Messina memorial was hacked too. They were using ransomware unknown to cybersecurity companies. St. Lawrence Health System has disconnected its Computer Systems and shut down the affected network to prevent even more problems. For a portion of tuesday, cantonpotsdam was asking ambulances to bring patients elsewhere. Gouvernor remains on diversion. Health investigative teams are working with the fbi and Homeland Security to provide them more information about the Ransomware Attack. Its local news from wwny tv in upstate new york. Hear that part about ambulance diversion, asking ambulance to take patients elsewhere . Three of st. Lawrence countys hospitals have been hit by a cyber attack. St. Lawrence county, new york. Its up against the canadian border. Three of the hospitals in that county have been hit by a cyber attack that has shut down hospital Computer Systems, and that has already meant in those hospitals, among other things, diverting patients to other places that are not being hit by this attack thats locking up their computers. Now, st. Lawrence county in new york is not, in case youre wondering, a covid hotspot. The latest data from the state of new york says st. Lawrence county has less than 400 covid cases in the whole county, which is good, and particularly for new york, thats good. But imagine this happening in one of the many places where the hospitals are already stressed to the max by the coronavirus surge. Well, yesterday, the fbi put out a joint alert with the Homeland Security departments Cybersecurity Agency, cesa, alerting hospitals across the country to get ready for this kind of attack, to prepare themselves and to make changes now to try to fend it off. Heres from that alert cisa, fbi and hhs have credible information of an increase in imminent cybercrime threat to u. S. Hospitals and health care providers. Cisa, fbi and hhs assess malicious cyber actors are targeting the health care and Public Health sector with trickbot malware, often leading to Ransomware Attacks, data theft and the disruption of health care services. Now, outside of st. Lawrence county where we saw that report, other hospitals that have apparently been hit by the attack include the sky Lakes Medical center, all the way across the country in Klamath Falls, oregon. This is from the Washington Post report on that the hospital is unable to offer cancer treatments that are computer controlled and the attack has curbed some diagnostic imaging as well. A hospital spokesman in Klamath Falls says doctors and nurses have turned to paper for patient records with the Electronic System offline. The New York Times reporting that the efforts to try to protect the hospital in Klamath Falls, oregon, once it came under attack were pretty blunt and simple employees at the hospital were told, if its a pc, shut it down. The times is also reporting that another hospital that was hit is in california, Sonoma Valley hospital in sonoma, california. They were apparently hit several days ago. As of today, they are still reportedly trying to restore their Computer Systems. Now, tonight, nbc news is reporting on yet more. The university of vermont has also reportedly been hit, and that includes facilities both in the state of vermont and also hospitals across the vermont border into new york state. And these are new york state hospitals, other than the ones in st. Louis county that we were just talking about. So, beyond this number of hospitals that have been hit with this cyber attack thus far, nicole perloff reporting at the New York Times that the hackers behind these attacks, believed to be based in moscow and st. Petersburg in russia, these hackers, have been trading a list of more than 400 u. S. Hospitals they plan to target. And if this is causing you to get a little pit in your stomach, you are not alone. Cybersecurity people are kind of freaking out about this. This is from the Associated Press the offensive by a russianspeaking criminal gang coincides with the u. S. President ial election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit. Charles carmakal, chief technical officer of Cybersecurity Firm mandian, said in a statement, we are experiencing the most significant cybersecurity threat we have ever seen in the United States. Alex holden, ceo of hold security, which has been closely tracking the ransomware in question for more than a year, agreed that the unfolding offensive is unprecedented in magnitude for the u. S. , given its timing in the heat of a contentious president ial election and the worst Global Pandemic in a century. All right, so, just in case having the worst and worstmanaged epidemic on earth wasnt enough, with the National Government thats pretending its not happening with something on the order of 47 states getting worse right now, with 229,000 of us dead already and 9 million of us infected as of tonight and no cure and no treatment in sight and no vaccine and a president who mocks and undermines efforts to fight it and slow its spread just in case thats not enough, now we have russian criminal hackers from moscow and st. Petersburg freezing the Computer Systems at our hospitals, in the middle of it, demanding money, or else. It seems like its a handful of hospitals already. This vermont information tonight reported by nbc news, plus the five or six other hospitals that were already reported by this afternoon, 400 hospitals, potentially on deck, in terms of how the hackers have been discussing this amongst themselves online. And the story gets worse and weirder. If you are not usually into news like this, if you dont follow things like cybersecurity all that closely, you might still have heard this term ransomware recently in the news, and thats because it was only about 2 1 2 weeks ago. And we covered this on the show at the time. We got this sort of odd announcement from microsoft, of all entities, in which microsoft said they were going on offense to take out a threat to our elections this year that was the kind of threat most of us didnt even know about, most of us who arent all that techminded wouldnt have even known to conceive of it. But what microsoft announced a couple weeks ago was they were taking out servers used by a big network called trickbot. They described it as a Gigantic Network of computers hijacked by russianspeaking criminal hackers to carry out Ransomware Attacks. Ransomware attacks are where you lock up computers or data and say you wont release the stuff unless they send you money. Ransomware, that is a crime and an increasingly common one, but its interesting. The reason this made news beyond cybersecurity and beyond, you know, computerrelated news, is because microsoft said, two weeks ago now, that it was taking action against trickbot, it was taking out their servers. Now, specifically, because trickbot was the kind of weapon that could be used to take out our election systems catastrophically, just in time for the president ial election. Its the type of weapon that could be used to lock up Voter Registration systems or vote tabulation systems or the means by which people access the vote count as the votes are counted on Election Night and beyond. So, a couple of weeks ago, right, this was good news microsoft figuring out a way, involving the courts, of all things, figuring out a way to Monkey Wrench trickbot and seize their servers. Trickbot, this russian criminal ransomware scheme. Microsoft said they were taking them out because they were worried, in part, that although theyd been used to commit all sorts of crimes, the new and present danger was that they could be used against our elections. The New York Times then had further good news. The New York Times then reported that once microsoft started acting against trickbot, they also found that u. S. Cyber command was already in there. U. S. Cyber command, headed by general paul nakasone, they found was also taking offensive operations against trickbot to take them out ahead of the elections, and for the same kind of reasons. The New York Times reporting at the time so far, trickbot has not been directed at voting infrastructure, officials say, but it would be well suited to turn against the offices of the secretaries of state who certify tallies, vulnerable Voter Registration systems, or electronic poll books, the records that allow people to vote. Trickbot would be an excellent weapon to use against systems like that. And so, its not just private industry, its not just the u. S. Government, its both, Cyber Command and microsoft acting a couple of weeks ago to take this trickbot network out, to eliminate that threat to our elections. Good. All good. Great news, until now. Because who is this hospitals attack, this current hospital attack being attributed to . Trickbot. Ah, turns out they havent been taken out. The same, big, sophisticated russian criminal scheme that everybody worried was the kind of weapon that would be ideally suited for the russians to use against our elections infrastructure. So, thank god they were being taken out. Turns out, they werent taken out. Microsoft and u. S. Cyber command went after them, but theyre back, and they have responded to the fact that the u. S. Government and microsoft came at them. They have responded to that by locking up multiple u. S. Hospitals Computer Systems so that multiple u. S. Hospitals tonight cannot take patients, and they cant give computerdriven cancer treatments, and they cant access Online Patient documents or electronic patient records or anything else that happens on a computer, and they have done this while we are in the middle of a huge, third surge of an infectious viral disease that is completely out of control in our country right now and that has put americans in the hospital by the tens of thousands. This isnt good. And it comes alongside a bunch of other smaller but still worrying reports. Theres a county in north georgia called hall county. Its where gainesville, georgia, is. Earlier this month, we learned that hall county had been hit with a Ransomware Attack. Its Computer Systems were infiltrated. The county was threatened that they had to pay up, or else. We dont know if they paid up or not. Hall county, georgia, has been very, very tightlipped about how theyre dealing with this, including to their local press. But today, the wall street journal reports that, apparently, the or else part is starting in hall county, georgia, with the hackers that attacked the county now posting online sensitive elections data that was stolen from the countys Computer Systems, including things like named individual voters in hall county who have submitted provisional ballots that have been flagged for signatures not matching. Also voter names and Voter Registration numbers and an inventory of hall countys elections equipment. All this sensitive stuff that hackers have stolen from the county and are now posting online, after having threatened hall county at the beginning of this month that they had infiltrated the countys systems and would start attacking them, if the county didnt pay. Now, georgia, of course, is a swing state and a very important one, both for the president ial race and for the senate. Hall county, that said, is not a particularly swingy county. Hall county, georgia, went for trump in 2016 by, okay, 50 points. But whos attacking them and infiltrating their electionrelated Computer Networks and now posting sensitive electionrelated records online, while publicly gloating about how much damage they can do because hall county isnt paying up . Thats happening in hall county, georgia, tonight, right now. Where else could that happen . Is that the same ransomware hackers that we are seeing hitting the hospitals and that all these elections experts were telling us were potentially going to target the election with this russian criminal botnet work that would be ideally suited to lock