Ted Stevens may not have won in Alaska

Nate Silver on the phantom ballots of Alaska:

Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count. According to Roll Call, these include “at least 40,000 absentee ballot, 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots”. Indeed, it seems possible that the number of “questionable” ballots could be quite high. So far, about 220,000 votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313,000 votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270,000 ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket.

But even if Begich were to make up ground and win a narrow victory, this would seem to represent a catastrophic failure of polling, as three polls conducted following the guilty verdict in Stevens’ corruption trial had Begich leading by margins of 7, 8 and 22 points, respectively.

I agree with Scott Horton, the more likely explanation is that someone has simply "lost track" of a good chunk of the Alaska vote.

Palin and her fans have a vested interest in Stevens winning the senate seat. If he is reelected and steps down, Palin will appoint his successor. She couldn't appoint herself, but she could step down and have her Lt. Governor appoint her.

As I said before the election, I felt very relieved to see McCain falter in the final days of the election. When he couldn't remember Larry Eagleburger's name on Meet The Press, I found myself thinking, "Whew. Nobody's going to cheat for that guy."

I think a lot of people would stick their necks out for Sarah Palin.

Correction: Actually, Palin wouldn't get to appoint Stevens' replacement. Alaska changed the law a couple years back. There would be a special election. The next question is whether Palin knows this.

Comments

[Eric Jaffa]

It's not a big deal to momentarily have trouble recalling a name.

That isn't why Republicans weren't more passionate for McCain.

It's because he used to be a moderate (saying in 1999 that Roe v. Wade shouldn't be overturned immediately, supporting campaign finance reform, voting against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.)

[Eric Jaffa]

Regarding the Alaska Senate race, the polling average on the morning of the election was Mark Begich (D) 55 to Ted Stevens (R) 40.

If the final results are completely different, then there should be a federal investigation into possible election fraud/incompetence.

[mudkitty]

Let's just make sure that ALL the ballots are counted.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

No, Palin doesn't get to appoint Steven's replacement. The law in Alaska got changed a few years back, after the scandal of Murkowski moving from senate to governorship and appointing his own daughter.

It would be a special election. Palin might well try to run, but it's not automatic.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

If you want post-partisanship, you don't reward partisan backstabbers like Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman's not post-partisan. He's a partisan and an opportunist. His whole career is defined by party lines, he's just adept at playing off them for his own benefit.

Frankly, post-partisanship is a meaningless buzzword anyway. There used to be so much overlap between Republicans and Democrats that allegiance to one party or the other was just a matter of choosing a team to root for. When party divisions are arbitrary, bipartisanship is actually valuable. In that case, it means that people who agree on the issues are cooperating without regard for superficial party distinctions.

But since the Republican Revolution of the mid-nineties, the Rockefeller Republicans and the Dixiecrats have gone the way of the dodo, especially the Rockefeller Republicans. These days, party lines reflect real, substantial, predictable differences in approaches to government and values.

So, the idea that, say, Obama should invite Republicans into his cabinet just for the sake of being bipartisan is bullshit. If there are Republicans who embody the values of Obama's administration, and who were otherwise the best qualified people for the jobs, that's one thing. For example, I think Bill Gates should stay on as SecDef because he's doing a good job and the military likes him.

Fetishizing bipartisanship for its own sake is just as dumb and counterproductive as elevating partisanship to a virtue.

[Alon Levy]

But since the Republican Revolution of the mid-nineties, the Rockefeller Republicans and the Dixiecrats have gone the way of the dodo, especially the Rockefeller Republicans. These days, party lines reflect real, substantial, predictable differences in approaches to government and values.

That's not true. Lieberman is predictably liberal on most domestic issues, and predictably conservative on foreign policy. Hagel is the exact opposite. Both represent a surprisingly large number of voters. Bloomberg, who's a more secular, more businesslike version of Lieberman, attracted 10-15% support in Presidential polls as a possible Independent candidate. And the current Governor of California is someone who's about as centrist as possible. The problem is that the national parties hate iconoclasts: the Democratic base primaried Lieberman, the Republican base primaried Gilchrest, and neither party would've chosen Schwarzenegger in a competitive primary.

Ironically, in some very conservative areas, the Democrats have the opposite problem - they run nutjobs for office. The Mississippi Democratic Party represents about the same values it did in 1954, only now it hates on Hispanics and gays instead of blacks. Fortunately, that party keeps losing elections. What I'm worried about is that the national party machine, which so far is winning elections, is run by Rovian purists who fetishize partisan control.

Fetishizing bipartisanship for its own sake is just as dumb and counterproductive as elevating partisanship to a virtue.

I agree. I'd be happy with keeping Lieberman in his current positions. He isn't particularly good for any cabinet job; conversely, booting him from his committee chairmanship would be stupid and vindictive, as I've argued elsewhere.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Alon, what are you talking about? Lieberman's a terrible chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He has zero regard for civil liberties. He has a record of trying to censor internet speech that he labels "pro-terrorist"--even though it contains no depictions of criminal activities or incitements to violence. He was a leading proponent of the Orwellian Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. He was weak on investigating the Katrina debacle as a favor to the White House, even though he could have pushed a lot harder in his role as chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee.

I agree that Lieberman's basically liberal on some domestic issues--but NOT on Homeland Security, where he's a hawk.

I predict that he will continue to vote his conscience, such as it is. He already has no compunctions about voting against the Democratic party while he caucuses with it. So, based on what I'm hearing from his defenders, his votes won't change much if he loses his committee chair and someone more qualified and enlightened might get the job.

Even if he hadn't stabbed Democrats in the back, I'd want to replace him as the HSGA Committee chair.

Looking at this dispassionately, Lieberman has nothing to offer the Senate Democrats except his notoriously inconstant vote.

[Alon Levy]

Alon, what are you talking about? Lieberman's a terrible chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He has zero regard for civil liberties.

That is true about him - as it is about most of the Democratic caucus. Unless Reid is prepared to replace Lieberman with someone like Feingold, I have no hope that a post-Lieberman HSGA will promote civil liberties. (As if a Democratic Congress would even try to stop any abuses that might come from Obama.)

[Daniel]

Meanwhile, Al Franken and the Democrats try to steal the election in Minnesota.

www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/11/022028.php

[cfrost]

Lieberman "will continue to vote his conscience".

He has a conscience?

As for Alaska, it's pretty clear that they're not yet ready for statehood.

[Alon Levy]

He has a conscience?

Yes - more so than people like Clinton, Edwards, Kerry, and Biden, who voted for the war in order to appear patriotic, and then disowned it the second it became unpopular.

[Eric Jaffa]

Hillary Clinton refused to apologize for her Iraq War vote. She didn't disown the Iraq War.

Regarding Joe Lieberman, he said in a debate on October 16, 2006, "No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do."

[mudkitty]

Looking good for Frankin.

Counting all the votes is not stealing an election. Quite the opposite in fact.

In MS such a close election requires an automatic recount BY LAW. It's mandated. Norm Colman wanted to by-pass the law, thus breaking the law - typical republican.

[Eric Jaffa]

mudkitty -

MINNESOTA = MN
MISSISSIPPI = MS

[Alon Levy]

Hillary Clinton refused to apologize for her Iraq War vote. She didn't disown the Iraq War.

The only person who apologized for it is Edwards, who had to reinvent himself as the anti-war candidate after he had cosponsored the Iraq war resolution. The rest just quietly became war opponents, endorsing timetables or criticizing Bush.

[cfrost]

The rest just quietly became war opponents, endorsing timetables or criticizing Bush.

It is appalling just how eager Democratic politicians were to be putty in Bush/Cheney's hands. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out how “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was going to play out. Anyone with a brain above room temperature could foresee that. The name alone betrays the neocons’ hallucinatory ambitions. We must never forget that congressional Democrats for the last eight years were at critical times more often lickspittle, toadying cowards than loyal opposition. And we should never hesitate to remind them that their hands will always be bloodstained. We should probably thank the folks who bombed the al-Askari Mosque in February of ’06, stoking the Iraqi civil war, and finally putting an end to the White House field marshal wannabe’s broader Middle East military dreams. God knows the Democratic “leaders” weren’t going to.

[Alon Levy]

We should probably thank the folks who bombed the al-Askari Mosque in February of ’06, stoking the Iraqi civil war, and finally putting an end to the White House field marshal wannabe’s broader Middle East military dreams.

This isn't just callous, but also blatantly untrue. The neocons' dreams were dashed around July '03. That was when they originally thought the US military would be able to leave. By '05, public opinion in the US was already against the war; '06 was just when things blew up out of proportion.

George Packer has argued how the neocons kept believing in various fantasies pushed by people who had no knowledge of the facts on the ground in Iraq. The subtext is that at every stage, they could have chosen facts over fiction and prevailed. However, this was institutionally impossible; the neocons as a group were committed to fighting the war the way they had believed a war ought to be fought, and if their principles had allowed the evidence-based change of mind that was necessary, they wouldn't have started the war to begin with.