Call it misplaced loyalty or misplaced partisanship, but Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican of Alaska, is holding a razor-thin edge with voters despite his conviction last month on seven felony counts of violating federal ethics laws.

After being pronounced guilty by a jury, Mr. Stevens went around telling Alaskans that he had “not been convicted of anything yet”  a fatuous distortion rooted in the technicality that he has not yet been sentenced.

That didn’t wash with his party’s presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, who called on Mr. Stevens to resign forthwith. And it shouldn’t wash with the rest of the Senate.

The final tally could take two weeks. As of Wednesday, Mr. Stevens was leading by about 3,400 votes over his Democratic opponent, Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, with 50,000 absentee ballots still to be counted. Mr. Stevens is determined to maintain his 1 percent edge and claim vindication, not disgrace.