More bad news for Lisa Murkowski. Not only has the Alaska Libertarian Party denied the incumbent Senator its ballot line, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee is withdrawing the team it sent to the 49th State to aid her campaign during the counting of absentee ballots:
Joe Miller, the Republican candidate poised to knock off Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in a primary contest, said Monday he has received assurances the GOP's Senate campaign committee is removing its operatives from the state and will remain neutral.State election officials will resume counting ballots Tuesday. Over 25,000 ballots remain to be processed, including absentee ballots, ballots pending under review for validity and 663 early ballots.
But he maintains there is still an effort to "skew" the results in Murkowski's favor.
After emerging from Tuesday's primary with a narrow lead over Murkowski, Miller expressed concern about a potential legal battle over the election and accused the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) of "meddling" in the contest. His comments came after the NRSC's chief counsel traveled to Alaska to assist Murkowski.
The Sarah Palin-backed candidate told ABC's "Topline" webcast Monday that he spoke with NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) over the weekend, and that he "gave me his word that he is pulling his team out."
NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh affirmed that the committee would support whoever the nominee is after the winner is decided, even though its lawyer was assisting Murkowski.
- JP
Has any reporter or Alaskan election official been able to reconcile how we have gotten to this 25,000 ballot figure?
ReplyDeleteI rember the day after the election it was reported that; (1) 16,000 absentee ballots had been issued - of which 7,600 had been returned by election day; (2) there were 6,000 provisional ballots cast on election day; and, (3) about 700 early votes cast had yet to be counted.
Now assming everyone of the 16,000 absentee ballots sent out was returned, combined with the already known and fixed numbers for provisional and early votes - one comes up with a MAXIMUM number of outstanding ballots of 22,700 (16,000 + 6,000 + 700 = 22,700).
So how do we get to over 25,000? Were more than 16,000 absentees sent out? Clearly, the Elections office should have known the exact numer of absentee ballots sent out before election day. Some reporter needs to reconcile these numbers, because they don't square with numbers previously reported.