When the Division of Elections closes for business today, Ted Stevens and Mark Begich will be a lot closer to knowing just who won the Alaska Senate race.

Elections officials plan to count more than half the 90,000 ballots that remain outstanding, the Anchorage Daily News writes today. That includes 61,000 absentee ballots, 9,500 early votes and 20,000 ballots that are disputed.

Officials will count the early votes and more than half the absentee votes, likely meaning Stevens' 3,257-vote lead will shrink. Early votes have gone to Democrat Begich by a 59%-37% margin, a spokesperson for the Alaska Democratic Party reports.

The number of outstanding ballots could still grow, as more than a quarter of Alaska's 40 precincts have not reported how many disputed ballots they have. Already, the 52,000 votes elections officials hope to count today amount to a little over 20% of the total number of votes cast.

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