Good, now can Sarah Palin go away? Please?

I suspect there are a lot of Alaskan Republicans looking at the AIP as their own local Naderites right about now.

Maybe, maybe not. At this point, every district where Stevens is winning, he has a solid majority. Begich, however, is winning in several districts with less than 50%.

You can also see that Alaska is like Virginia, with "real" and "fake" parts. Real Alaska is in Sarah Palin's stomping grounds, the Mat-Su Valley, where Stevens has his biggest margins. Fake Alaska is downtown Juneau, which went 71% for Begich (and is often the only district in Alaska to vote Democrat for president).

As it happens, I am now sitting in the swingiest district in Alaska with a .5% margin between Stevens and Begich.

I think more important than which districts the votes come from, is the fact that they are early vote, absentee, or provisional ballots, all of which would seem to favor Begich. The fact that most are from districts Begich won is an added bonus. Is it possible that Stevens won some districts by huge margins because the Dems were pushing their voters to vote early?

Has anyone else noticed that the Republican leadership doesn't seem to falling all over themselves for Stevens like they are for Coleman?

I guess "they're being unfair to the felon" isn't the best rallying cry

I wish Grumpy, thorin-1, Ghillie and any other of our Alaskan regulars whose names I've missed would give us the skinny on how the AIP is actually viewed in Alaska. My impression has always been that, due to the rather, er, free-spirited character of the state, the AIP isn't considered all that far out (sort of the way we in Chicago view Jeremiah Wright's church--with a big shrug and a "watchagonnado"). Is that true?

I need to clarify mine of 4:34--not "Jeremiah Wright's church" but "Jeremiah Wright."

I suspect the AIP candidate was the choice of AK Republicans who couldn't vote for a felon: a very different story from Nader. How did the AIP candidate do in the House race?

I'm still confused why it is taking this long to count 300,000 votes from a state with less than a million people. Haven't there been ~40,000 outstanding votes to be counted for the past 10 days?

Well of course Ted Stevens' vote balance is deteriorating. Anyone remember the story of how fishy it was that he got so many "votes" to begin with? It was reported at 538 etc, I don't recall if here or not.

Now, we cross our fingers for "Weird Al" Franken to bring spice and Democratic empowerment to the Senate. (Folks, please handle it responsibly and "for the people" OK?)

Interesting... They gave the win to Stevens, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, come an extra TENS OF THOUSANDS of votes?
If we in the lower 49 hadn't kind of kept our eyes on that rogue state up there, they would have gotten away with it and had the felon back in the Senate, so Falin' Palin could nominate herself to go to Washington!

My impression has always been that, due to the rather, er, free-spirited character of the state, the AIP isn't considered all that far out (sort of the way we in Chicago view Jeremiah Wright's church--with a big shrug and a "watchagonnado"). Is that true?

I live in one of the more liberal communities in the state. But, in general I think that Alaskans have a don't bother me and I won't bother you attitude. It really helps make small town life more tolerable. Although AIP is definitely a fringe group, I think most people are liekly to shrug their shoulders and say, "so what?" about them.

In my experience, where this attitude starts to break down is with issues important to fundamentalist Christians and natural resource allocation issues. I've seen a lamentable degree of intolerance from the fundamentalists. Resource allocation issues can get plain nasty.

I'm still confused why it is taking this long to count 300,000 votes from a state with less than a million people.

From Mark Begich's description of the process on Rachel Maddow's show last night, they aren't counted in place the way they are in most other places, they are transported from across Alaska to four cities (Juneau, Nome, Anchorage, and Fairbanks, IIRC) where they are counted. This makes it logistically more complicated than elsewhere.

Plus, of course, like many other states the early/absentee voting is much higher than normal, and those votes take more to process, usually (signature verification, etc., in most places, I presume Alaska is similar), and like most places, they probably weren't staffed-up enough to accommodate that without taking more time than normal.

Lots of places are still counting votes across the country, its just that in most important races we "know" which way things turned out (at least, the margins are big enough from the counted votes that we think we know the final outcome, even if the uncounted votes still offer the theoretical possibility of reversal.)

Alaska only seems special because of the attention to the particular race.

"Maybe, maybe not. At this point, every district where Stevens is winning, he has a solid majority."

What difference does this make? Unless Alaska has an electoral-college style method of electing its Senator, all the candidate has to do is get the most votes statewide. A third-party candidate is inevitably going to draw some votes from one or the other candidates from the two major parties. I have to believe that Stevens would have drawn the much larger portion of those 11,000 votes (or of whatever percentage of them that would have voted at all) if the AIP guy hadn't been on the ballot. Which means it's entirely plausible, if not likely, that the AIP— which Princess Sarah so cheerfully saluted at the opening of their recent convention—actually cost her a chance at moving up to the Senate.

Interesting... They gave the win to Stevens, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, come an extra TENS OF THOUSANDS of votes?

Seemingly from out of nowhere, but actually from the stack of early, absentee, and out-of-precinct votes. There are other reasons why it's taking this long, beyond what cmdicely mentioned: absentee ballots postmarked by election day had until today to arrive (therefore, they literally did not have every ballot in hand until just now), and a problem with double-voting in August. There were 26 cases of people voting absentee then voting at the polls, so they decided to hang on to more absentee ballots to cross-check the rolls.

This is usually how long it takes to count ballots. What's unusual is that A) there's a major race with a very small margin, and B) an unusually large portion of ballots (at least 30%) could not be counted on election night.

...due to the rather, er, free-spirited character of the state, the AIP isn't considered all that far out...

That, and the fact that the party is a non-factor. Y'know, like the Libertarians. The only AIPs to ever get elected promptly switched back to major parties, notably Wally Hickel after he won the governor's race in 1994.

Thanks for the 'fo, AK Liberal and Grumpy.

"Given the margins between Stevens and Begich, I suspect there are a lot of Alaskan Republicans looking at the AIP as their own local Naderites right about now."

Interesting side-note on that: just a few years ago, Alaska voted on a referendum that would've made almost all future state-wide elections (including the presidential and senatorial elections but, for some strange reason, not the gubernatorial election) be conducted via Instant Runoff Voting, which eliminates the spoiler dilemma by allowing a voter to give his first-choice vote to the candidate he loves (say, an AIP guy), and his second-choice vote to the candidate he kinda likes (say, a Republican), and on down the line, so as not to have to worry about inadvertently helping elect a candidate he hates (say, the Democrat).

I went to Alaska for a week back then to volunteer for the campaign to pass IRV in that state, because, being a third-party voter myself, I'd like to see IRV become accepted practice nationwide, so as to free voters up to vote for third-party candidates without reservation, or fear of election-spoiling. The referendum was indeed held and, despite our best efforts, IRV was rejected at the ballot box. The reason: the Democratic Party pulled out all the stops to defeat IRV. They knew that vote-splitting (of the type that appears to've happened up North this November) was the only way a Democrat could get elected in Alaska.

A little something to think about, next time you'd like to vote for a progressive third-party candidate who stands for what you believe in, but can't because you fear that a Republican will be elected as a result. There *is* a voting method that could address that dilemma, and there are folks who are fighting to institute that method, but, in general, the Democratic Party is not among those folks, and, in some cases, is actively working against those folks, because your fear works to its benefit, and because election-spoiling sometimes works in its favor.

Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA

Both those that blame Nader and those sore at the AIP are wrong.

Turn out better candidates and it won't be a problem.

Al Gore 2000 was a crummy candidate. I don't think we would have seen Al Gore winning the Nobel without the Green Party's smackdown. I'm not saying the defeat was a good thing, on balance, but I don't blame them for wishing a pox on both houses at the time.