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Young barely ahead; votes yet to be counted
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Race
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| Contributor | ev |
| Last Edited | ev Aug 28, 2008 02:28am |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Aug 27, 2008 05:00pm |
| Description | Young barely ahead; votes yet to be counted
By SEAN COCKERHAM | scockerham@adn.com
Published: August 27th, 2008 04:59 PM
Last Modified: August 27th, 2008 05:01 PM
U.S. Rep. Don Young maintained a razor-thin lead over Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell this afternoon, but a winner in the race will not be known for two weeks.
With all but one of Alaska's 438 precincts reporting in the Republican U.S. House primary, Young leads by less than one quarter of one percentage point. The difference was just 152 votes, with Young up 42,539 to 42,387.
The remaining uncounted precinct is in the village of Hughes.
But absentee and questioned ballots won't be counted until Sept. 5. Also, the Division of Elections ran out of Republican primary ballots in Petersburg and Wrangell late Tuesday afternoon. Republican voters in those Southeast Alaska towns were then allowed to vote using sample ballots, which are valid, but they won't be counted until the state election review board starts its work on Sept. 8, Gail Fenumiai said.
Fenumiai said 204 voters in Petersburg used the sample ballot and 53 in Wrangell.
It's unclear how many absentee ballots will be counted in the race. The state mailed out over 16,200 and has received about 7,600 back.
"So there's still a potential for 8,000-plus of those to come back," Fenumiai said.
Fenumiai said she's also anticipating between 5,000 and 10,000 questioned ballots to be counted Sept. 5.
Parnell, as lieutenant governor, is the state official in charge of overseeing the Division of Elections. He appointed Fenumiai, a longtime Elections Division employee, to her position. He recused himself from oversight of the primary when he became a candidate and that is still the case, she said. She is overseeing the election.
The race was close all night Tuesday as returns were counted, with Parnell claiming a lead of several hundred votes as Alaskans went to bed.Young picked up votes overnight as new precincts were counted from rural |
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