Alaska voting update: Begich increases lead to 1022 votes!

Begich, Mark	DEM	138959	47.37%
Bird, Bob	AI	12144	4.14%
Gianoutsos, Ted	NA	1249	0.43%
Haase, Fredrick D.	LIB	2270	0.77%
Stevens, Ted	REP	137937	47.02%
Write-in Votes		786	0.27%

http://www.elect.alaska.net/data/results.htm

The Anchorage Daily News reports:

Mark Begich has extended his lead over Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens to 1,022 votes with the latest count of absentee and questioned ballots. The Elections Division counted 14,508 ballots today. The count of absentee and questioned ballots will pick up Tuesday. The state has an estimated 24,000 more ballots left to count in the race.

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The fact that the Democratic Begich's lead over the Republican Stevens is increasing even as ballots are counted from the Stevens stronghold of the Mat-Su is not a good sign for the 40-year incumbent's chances to retain his seat.

The Elections Division on Tuesday will count absentee ballots from Anchorage, which has generally been split between Begich and Stevens, as well as Southeast Alaska, which is heavily pro-Begich.

Update from Kos:

That's another 10,000 counted, leaving roughly 28,000 or so ballots left, most from Begich-friendly districts.

So we're at .35 percent. If Begich gets over 0.5 percent, any recount would have to be paid by the GOP. Under that, and the state pays for it.

http://www.dailykos.com/

I can't remember when I first started coming to Talking Points Memo, but it was a few years ago. It has only been more recent that I started blogging here, and it has been a great experience. For me, TPM is my home on the tubes. Thanks to Josh and the TPM staff for creating this place where we can come together and debate, discuss, and dissect the issues of the day. Anyone else care to join me in making this a big "Thank You" thread?

The totals were last updated at 3:30pm local time, and haven't been updated since, so maybe this is the last update we'll get today. Looks like it will be at least Monday before a final number comes in, as the reports say they will be counting the question (provisional) ballots on Saturday. Current totals:

Begich   125019

Stevens 125016

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Update from the Alaska Board of Elections:

 

Nate Silver reports:

Prior to today, Stevens' lead over Begich had been 3,257 votes, with the state of Alaska having reported that about 90,000 votes remained to be counted. Although some of those votes will be thrown out (such as duplicate votes when the voter both sent in an absentee ballot and came to the polling place), there are still plenty of votes remaining to be counted, and Begich is making up ground at a sufficient pace that he appears more likely than not to surpass Stevens.

A significant number of additional votes will be counted before close of business today, although approximately 8 of Alaska's 40 house districts won't finalize their counting process until Friday at the earliest. The areas that will report late consist mostly of rural, Begich-friendly districts (contrary to our earlier reporting, Begich performed quite well in rural Alaska; his weaknesses were in the Anchorage Suburbs and the Mat-Su Valley).

There has been so much speculation in the media, and there have been so many lies, about Barack Obama's religious beliefs, that it is amazing to me that this interview hasn't been printed in full before now. In 2004, Chicago Sun Times columnist Cathleen Falsani interviewed Obama during his run in Illinois for the US Senate. The full transcript of the interview has just been published for the first time. It's an excellent, lengthy interview and well worth reading in full, as there are a great variety of subjects covered, but one section that jumps out is in regards to the separation of church and state:

Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root ion this country.

As I said before, in my own public policy, I'm very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.

Now, that's different form a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it's perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values tha tinform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.

A standard line in my stump speech during this campaign is that my politics are informed by a belief that we're all connected. That if there's a child on the South Side of Chicago that can't read, that makes a difference in my life even if it's not my own child. If there's a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that's struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it's not my grandparent. And if there's an Arab American family that's being rounded up by John Ashcroft without the benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

I can give religious expression to that. I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, we are all children of God. Or I can express it in secular terms. But the basic premise remains the same. I think sometimes Democrats have made the mistake of shying away from a conversation about values for fear that they sacrifice the important value of tolerance. And I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.

All I can say is, wow. Another great quote:

I'm a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it's best comes with a big dose of doubt. I'm suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.

I think that, particularly as somebody who's now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there's an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.

And one last morsel:

It's interesting particularly now after this election, comes with it a lot of celebrity. And I always think of politics as having two sides. There's a vanity aspect to politics, and then there's a substantive part of politics. Now you need some sizzle with the steak to be effective, but I think it's easy to get swept up in the vanity side of it, the desire to be liked and recognized and important. It's important for me throughout the day to measure and to take stock and to say, now, am I doing this because I think it's advantageous to me politically, or because I think it's the right thing to do? Am I doing this to get my name in the papers or am I doing this because it's necessary to accomplish my motives.

There is much more to ponder, so please go take a look at:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/11/obamas-interview-with-cathleen.html

The section on community organizing is also of deep insight, but so are many other passages. How lucky are we to have someone this thoughtful and intelligent about to step into the driver's seat?

Even though there are still a few days left for absentee votes to arrive, the bulk of the 90,000 that remain should be tallied by the end of today. From the Anchorage Daily News:

A week after Election Day, about 30 percent of the votes that will decide the fate of embattled U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens still haven't been counted.

The Alaska Division of Elections expects to count most of the roughly 90,000 early, absentee ballots or questioned ballots remaining today.

Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in U.S. Senate history, leads Democrat Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, by 3,257 votes.

Along with finally letting the rest of the country know whether Alaska decided to send a convicted felon back to Congress, is the lingering mystery of just how the numerous polls managed to be so spot-on with every other state in the country, but got it so wrong in the Alaska race, prompting a number of journalists to question the integrity of the Alaska voting process. From Propublica.org "The Mystery of the Missing Alaska Voters" :

On his number-crunching blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver noted that three polls conducted after the conviction of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) on corruption charges placed him at a considerable disadvantage to his Democratic challenger Mark Begich. But by at least the counts so far, Stevens was ahead by nearly 3,300 votes. Likewise, Ethan Berkowitz had a sizable lead over incumbent Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who is under investigation for ties to the same oil company at the heart of the Stevens conviction. But Young won.

The numbers have left some deeply suspicious. "I'm wondering if someone stole the body and blood of this election," one writer put it on a widely linked Huffington Post piece (with plenty of exclamation points). "Where are the votes? Something stinks at the Alaska Division of Elections." 

Not everyone finds the low turnout suspicious, with some sources pointing to colder than normal temperatures in Alaska on election day, news reports predicting long lines at the voting booths, the early calling of the election for Obama and McCain's concession speech before Alaska's polls closed.

Hopefully, by the end of the day, the final 30% of Alaska's vote will answer a lot of these lingering questions.

The latest update from the ethically-challenged State of Alaska, from the Brad Blog:

This just in from Alaska, where thousands of new ballots continue to be found each day, since it was first reported that turnout in 2008 was 11% lower than in 2004. Thousands of ballots, nearly a third of them, remain uncounted nearly a week after the election. Their numbers could explain the strange results so far in races --- such as those of the felonious Sen. Ted Stevens (R) and the under-investigation Rep. Don Young (R) --- for which pollsters had predicted decisive losses for the Republicans.

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The following updated numbers come from the DNC's Alaska Communications Director, Kay Brown late this afternoon [emphasis in the original]...

New totals for ballots were posted today at:
http://www.elections.ala...rly_question_numbers.pdf

The Division of Elections reports there are now 90,635 ballots remaining to be counted. This means nearly 29 percent (28.8%) of the total vote has not been counted yet.

With these new numbers the total vote is at 314,268, with turnout at 63.3% (registered voters = 495,731).

The new ballots posted today include about 4,000 additional Questioned ballots about 5,600 additional Absentees.

The Division of Elections (DOE) plans to count the majority of early vote and absentee ballots that were verified by Election Day on Wednesday. The DOE Plans to count the remaining ballots on Friday (but this is all obviously subject to change). However, there could be enough ballots left after Wednesdays count for the race to still go either way.

All overseas ballots have to be received by Wednesday, November 19th and the DOE plans to certify the election on Tuesday, November 25. A recount, should one be necessary, would occur after that. An automatic recount is only implemented if the final votes are within 0.5 percent.

Total turnout in 2004 was 314,502 with these new ballots posted today we are still slightly under the number who voted in 2004. Turnout in the 2004 General was 66.6%, with 314,502 voting and 472,160 registered voters statewide.