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"Sen. Lisa Murkowski appeared to have a solid lead Thursday in this state's closely watched Senate contest, despite aggressive attempts by her opponent's campaign to disqualify as many write-in ballots as possible.
About 89 percent of those ballots that have been counted are cleanly for Murkowski, who waged a last-minute write-in campaign to keep her seat. Hundreds more - about 8 percent - have been challenged because of misspellings and other issues by Joe Miller, a tea-party-backed lawyer who toppled the senator in the Republican primary.
About a third of the roughly 92,000 write-in ballots have been counted, and the process is likely to take a couple more days. In last week's election, Miller garnered 35 percent of the ballots, while 40 percent of the voters wrote in their selection. Most of those write-in ballots are presumed to be for Murkowski, who made an extraordinary effort to reach out to voters and remind them how to spell her name.
Most of the challenged ballots eventually will be counted toward Murkowski's total unless a court intervenes. Miller has argued that the state must throw out all ballots on which Murkowski's name is misspelled. But state officials said that the law does not have such a strict standard and that they will accept minor misspellings if the voter's intent is clear."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111107556.html