Alaska's controversial and still-undecided Senate race between Republican Joe Miller and current Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski—who Miller beat in the primary and who then mounted a write-in campaign—may come down to a court challenge over the 92,500 write-in ballots cast. In his latest election-blog entry, Michael Alvarez—co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voter Technology Project—notes that, despite the brouhaha, 89 percent of the write-in voters somehow "managed to get Murkowski's name spelled correctly." Alvarez says that no matter which way this particular contest eventually goes, the real lesson may be in the success of the Murkowski campaign's efforts "to inform Alaskan voters how to cast a correct write-in ballot," and how that information might be used in the future by other campaigns in other states.
