The Republican Party is demanding that Mississippi election officials “separate and preserve” all provisional ballots cast in the midterms — the first step in a likely bid to throw out votes in the state’s extremely close U.S. Senate race*.
The vote count is ongoing, and Democrat Scott Colom currently leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith ® by several hundred votes, with certification due by Nov. 13. His victory would represent a significant upset in the state’s Republican-dominated politics.
Alaska has been showing a ~600 vote difference since this morning. Only 74% counted, but still, that’s pretty dang close!
Alaska will take a very long time, I suspect. Ranked choice voting is better, but requires effectively a full count before redistributing losing-candidate votes.
I’ve read that this is also compounded by how remote some of the communities in Alaska are - it simply takes longer to collect up all the votes to begin with.
The state is also huge and rural. It’s something like 20% the size of the lower 48, full of mountains and forests. I assume that a lot of that information is transmitted, but I also assume that there is a lot of snail mail that takes its time.