Alaska Senate Race Still Not Decided
HOLMES: Good morning Washington D.C., waking up to a little Maroon 5, "Harder to Breathe." We hope that it's not going to be harder to govern next year after the elections results we just saw. Changes are coming to Washington, D.C. But here we are four days after the midterm Election Day. We still don't know who won the Senate contest in Alaska. So what's the hold-up? Well, they may need to do a spell-check on thousands of ballots. The incumbent Lisa Murkowski has claimed victory, if you will, after her write-in candidacy. She launched that write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary to Joe Miller.</s>LISA MURKOWSKI, (R) ALASKA SENATE CANDIDATE: They said -- they said you can't do it, you can't win a write-in campaign, not in Alaska, not anywhere. They said we can't do it. Do they know Alaska? Do they know Alaska? Yes, we can.</s>CROWD: Yes, we can! Yes, we can!</s>HOLMES: Well, not Joe Miller. He's saying, oh, no, you department. The official counting of the write in ballots was up to next Wednesday, a week before actually planned. And so Miller, he's got a problem with that.</s>JOE MILLER, (R) ALASKA SENATE CANDIDATE: We're not asking it to be pushed. We're asking that the original date be honored. We think that it's improper to suddenly foist upon the Alaskans to move it up a week. Obviously it's going require volunteers on the ground, 81,000 ballots. And they all do have to be examined. Each one has to be examined to make sure we know who's on that write-in.</s>HOLMES: OK, deciding the winner not as simple as counting ballots. Libby Casey is correspondent for Alaska Public Radio. She joins me know. You just flew in on the red eye to D.C. from Alaska. We appreciate you do that. Your state now has the potential to make Florida look like child's play with this thing. So tell us, first of all. We just heard Lisa Murkowski there. She certainly sounds victorious. What makes her so confident she's the win wither?</s>LIBBY CASEY, ALASKA PUBLIC RADIO REPORTER: The write-in slot on the ballot got 13,000 more votes than anyone else, and so Lisa Murkowski guesses that most of those votes will be for her. She was the woman going out there, educating people about how you had to fill in the oval and write out her name. They had all these jingles and they solicited help from Alaskans about how to spell her name, and so she says I'm likely the winner. Joe Miller says, wait, we haven't seen any of those write-in ballots. And so it ain't over till it's over.</s>HOLMES: So, Libby, is that a fair argument? She is making, common sense I guess would tell you, this is a write-in campaign. She was the one that's the head of the write-in campaign. That's a fairly logical argument.</s>CASEY: It is logical, but we need to see what all those ballots say. Counting and reading those votes on Wednesday, they guess it will take three to four days. Now, there were a bunch of other people who ran as write-ins as well. In Alaska you have to register ahead of time to be a viable write-in candidate. But Joe Miller, not Joe Miller himself, but supporters encouraged Miller supporters to do what one blog called "Operation Alaska Chaos" and register as write-ins as well to confuse both voters at the polls when they asked for a list of candidates. Where's Lisa Murkowski's name among these 160 other candidates? And also confuse things potentially when the count starts. You mentioned the Florida race and the hanging chads. We're going to see some of the same players in Alaska because one of the lawyers Lisa Murkowski hired worked for Bush his team in 2000 and worked in the Minnesota count for Norm Coleman. So everybody is lawyering up and getting ready for what may be a big event.</s>HOLMES: He's a heavy hitter. If he gets called in, they're serious. But what's going to have to happen? It's not just counting these ballots. They have to look at each one and confirm whether or not the intent of that voter was to write "Lisa Murkowski" or L Murkowski. They have to do a spell check.</s>CASEY: That's right. And the division of elections hasn't said yet exactly what they will accept and what they won't accept. They said voter intent, that's what they'll be looking for. There will be 15 teams going through all of these ballots starting next week, And the folks who have a lot at stake in this, Lisa Murkowski's camp and Joe Miller's camp, the Republican as well, there are allowed to have observers. So there may be three to five observers in the room at one time challenging the ballots, saying that's not quite legible. Did they spell Murkowski or someone else?</s>HOLMES: One other note. There was a Lisa M that was running as well. I can't remember her name, but she too could add to the confusion. There's a Lisa M. out there. Unless they're absolutely clear about Murkowski, that could create issues. Libby, thank you for taking the long flight. Thank you so much. We look forward to talking to you maybe months down the road. Thanks so much.</s>CASEY: Thanks again.</s>HOLMES: As many of you know, things didn't go so well for Democrats on Election Day, losing some 60 seats in the House. The Democrats who won were clearly happy to hold onto their jobs, really happy.</s>HOLMES: So happy he is literally turning cartwheels. That is Colorado Congressman Ed Perlmutter. He was doing cartwheels after his close reelection win. But this wasn't just a celebratory tumble he was taking. He was kind of rubbing it in the face of his Republican opponents who actually used during the campaign video of him doing a cartwheel in a parade last year to attack him in a campaign ad. So that was his response. In California, a Democratic state senator won her re-election by a landslide. There's just one problem. She's dead. Jenny Oropeza won with 58 percent of the vote, but she died two weeks before the election after battling cancer. Her name stayed on the ballot because she died so close to the election and Democrats encouraged people to vote for her anyway in hopes of keeping the seat out of Republican hands. Now there's going to have to be a special election and Democrats will be able to find another candidate. Meanwhile, the former President George W. Bush said he personally Okayed waterboarding of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed. That's according to his new memoir "Decision Points" coming out next week. In it the president said when he was asked by the CIA if they could proceed with waterboarding, his response was, quote, "damn right." Also, a warning out there to any country that is about to get a visit from Hillary Clinton. Brace yourselves. It seems anywhere she goes, an earthquake follows. Just as she was landing in Christchurch New Zealand, Friday, the city got an aftershock from an earlier 7.0 earthquake. Two days earlier she was wrapping up a visit in Papua, New Guinea. It got hit with a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. We could go back to February of '09, minor quake while she was visiting Japan. June of '09 a minor quake in Honduras. October of '09, several quakes while she was in Pakistan. Also days before she was to visit Chile in March, the country got hit with an 8.8 earthquake. So if she's coming your way, be warned. Also we need to give you a warning any time Reynolds is coming up.</s>WOLF: I'm here, man.</s>HOLMES: Are you OK?</s>WOLF: Any chance -- nothing against Secretary Clinton, but any way we can keep her from CNN center maybe?