No Wonder Republicans Don't Want Those Votes Counted! Looks Like Even Alaskans Didn't Want To Re-elect Felon Ted Stevens

Ever since Bush and his coterie successfully sued to stop the vote count in a monumentally corrupt and ideological Supreme Court (2000), Republicans have been doing their best to systematically disenfranchise as many people as they can. It looks like slimy Norm Coleman is going to go to court over every single vote until he finally winds up in the Volksgerichtshof 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most partisan and neo-fascist court in America. And John Boehner's handpicked banking industry lobbyist, Steve Stivers, and California lunatic fringe extremist Tom McClintock also want to prevent votes from being counted in their close races in Columbus and northeast California.

This evening the Anchorage Daily News is reporting that, with over 10,000 ballots left to count today-- and around 35,000 total-- Mark Begich is now leading Ted Stevens, 125,019 to 125,016! Stevens was up by 3,000 votes before the "missing" ballots were found and the counting began.

Looks like Begich is going to pull this off after all, probably as much to the relief of Democrats as to embarrassed members of the Republican Senate caucus, where Jim DeMint has been screaming bloody murder about tossing Stevens out.


UPDATE: WEDNESDAY'S COUNTING IS OVER

All the most heavily Republican-leaning areas, like Fairbanks and the meth-cooking centers like Mat-Su Valley, are counted and, aside from statewide absentee ballots, the rest of the votes to be counted are from Democratic-leaning rural areas. The final end-of-the-day count:

Mark Begich 132196
Ted Stevens 131382

That puts Begich ahead by 814 votes, not a landslide but growing steadily.


UPDATE: STEVENS POLLSTER SAYS BEGICH WILL WIN

I'm sure David Dittman knows more about it than I do, and it's not certain since votes continue to be counted, but from a Ted Stevens pollster's look at the trends, Mark Begich will be replacing Ted Stevens in the U.S Senate.

"I don't think Stevens can come back," Dittman said, noting that he thinks the remaining trove of uncounted ballots will help Begich "increase his lead."