The Alaska Division of Elections counted 60,000 absentee ballots and provisional ballots yesterday and Sen. Ted Stevens' 3200-vote lead over Anchorage mayor Mark Begich has been completely erased. Begich now leads by 814 votes, with another 20,000 absentee ballots that arrived after election day yet to be counted. In addition, 15,000 provisional ballots are still waiting to be verified and counted. Nationally, something like half of all provisional ballots are rejected, but the ones that are counted tend to skew Democatic. More ballots will be counted tomorrow, but Anchorage, where Begich is well known, won't count until next week.
While no Republican has publicly expressed a desire to see Begich win, privately many of them would be very happy to avoid having to cast a vote on whether to expel Stevens from the Senate, a vote that will not be necessary if Begich wins. On the other hand, if Begich wins, there will be no special election and Sarah Palin will stay in Alaska as governor. If Stevens wins and is expelled from the Senate, there will be a special election which Palin might be able to win. Having 4 years in the Senate would give her a national platform that could act as a springboard for a 2012 presidential race. A Begich win eliminates that option.
If Begich wins, the Democrats will have 58 seats in the Senate and attention will move to Minnesota, where Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Democrat Al Franken are engaged in a high-stakes, bitter recount. Coleman currently leads by 200 votes. However, there were 25,000 undervotes--ballots with a vote for President and no vote for the Senate race. In a manual recount, some of these may yet count. If the voter didn't press the pencil hard enough or made an X instead of filling in the oval, the optical scanner might have missed the vote, but Minnesota law states that if the intent of the voter can be determined, the vote is valid. About 18,000 of the undervotes are in counties that Barack Obama won.
The final Senate race is the runoff in Georgia on Dec. 2. If Begich and Franken win, then the runoff will determine whether or not the Democrats get the magic 60 seats in the Senate. Suddenly, the race will take on national proportions. Already many Republican big guns have promised to campaign for Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). It is not clear whether Barack Obama will campaign for Jim Martin (D), since a loss there, which is likely, might tarnish his image somewhat.
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