BEGICH: In close races, we have a third of the vote that is came in from early votes, absentees and question ballots.
We wanted to make sure as they were verifying the question ballots as well as the absentees, they met all the criteria and nothing was left out.
In an October 2011 interview with the Guardian, Salmond made it clear that he was considering a two-question ballot, describing fiscal autonomy without full independence as "a very popular option".
Some of the issues under discussion have included whether there should be a single-question ballot paper and whether 16 and 17-year-olds should be allowed to vote.
Mrs. Francik changed her mind during the debate that night on the mail-in ballot question, voting against Mrs. Crawford.
More than 40,000 absentee and questioned ballots remain to be counted and write-in ballots must be manually read to determine the name written on them.
In 2008, Republican senator Ted Stevens led Democrat Mark Begich by about 3,000 votes after election day, but before the absentees and questioned ballots were counted.
Mr. Miller trails write-in votes by more than 10,000 votes, but his campaign believes he will prevail by persuading courts to discount misspelled write-in votes and by winning a large share of outstanding absentee and questioned ballots.
Because of the way the votes are counted in the state – officials begin counting absentee and questioned ballots a week after the election – the 2014 race between Democratic senator Mark Begich and Republican Dan Sullivan still has not been settled.
Mr. Stevens, 84 and a 40-year incumbent, led his Democratic challenger, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, by fewer than 3,400 votes with more than 55,000 absentee, early and questioned ballots remaining to be counted.
Barring a landslide for Mr. Miller in absentee and questioned ballots that are still to be counted, he could potentially need more than 10 percent of the write-in votes to have either been cast for someone other than Ms. Murkowski or to have been cast for her improperly.
