Counting write-in ballots in the Alaska Senate race is taking longer than expected, and could end up taking an extra two days to finish, according to Alaska Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai.
The Anchorage Daily News reports that officials had hoped to finish counting 129 precincts by the end of the day today, but by 1:00 p.m. Alaska time they had only finished 31. “I don’t think we’re going to get through them,” Fenumiai said.
Enough votes were cast for write-in candidates to force a count to determine how many were for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who launched a write-in bid after losing to the tea party-backed Joe Miller in the Republican primary. Though Miller filed a lawsuit yesterday to block the state from counting votes containing misspellings, the count began today as planned.
Miller himself appeared on Fox News earlier to discuss his lawsuit, contending that it’s “not sour grapes.” He said that at the beginning of Murkowski’s campaign “she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising that people that wanted to write her name in needed to do it right.”
“She knew what the standard was,” Miller said, but a few days ago “the Division of Elections issues out a new standard, one that doesn’t follow state law.”
“We shouldn’t be changing the rules as we go just because an incumbent senator is in the process of trying to win an election,” he said.
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