Believe it or not, initially they planned to wait two weeks to even start counting the write-ins. Now, mercifully, they’re pushing it up to next week, with certification dates and recount deadlines and the inevitable court challenges to follow at unspecified intervals.

Remember, Al Franken wasn’t sworn in until July.

They would like to get the count started “earlier rather than later” and could possibly begin counting as soon as next week — instead of the
initially reported date of Nov. 18.

The count will take place in Juneau. They have 81,876 write-in ballots
that must be counted by hand so far and still have a few precincts that
have yet to report…

Once the results are certified (this date is also pending) a candidate
has 5 days to request a recount. From that initial certification date, a
candidate also has a total of 10 days to contest the results.

The good news: Team Miller reminds us that something like five or six percent of write-in ballots are typically judged invalid. One big reason why that may loom large here is that it’s not enough to write in the candidate’s name; per state law, you have to fill in the oval or else the ballot’s no good, notwithstanding the voter’s clear intent. The bad news: Murkowski’s campaign to educate voters on write-in protocol is unprecedented and may cut the error rate way down. I’m also not sold on the theory that a meaningful number of those ballots could be for one of the other 160 candidates who ended up on the write-in list; who, exactly, is going into the booth and picking a name from the list at random? Even the people who signed up as candidates to mess with Murky likely aren’t voting for themselves but for Miller.

Here’s the real travesty, though:

Robert Campbell, Mr. Miller’s campaign manager, cautioned that Mrs. Murkowski can’t count on every write-in vote.

“I’m sure there’s probably going to be two or three dozen votes for Spiderman,” he said.

Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell said Wednesday write-in votes for Mr. Miller won’t count because Mr. Miller’s name isn’t on the official list of write-in candidates.

With all the talk of write-ins up there, there may well be a chunk of Miller voters who went into the booth thinking that writing someone in was the only option. I can’t wait to see how Alaska’s going to justify tossing out otherwise valid ballots bearing his name when the legal standard in the state is to follow the intent of the voter. Whether he’s on a preapproved list or not shouldn’t matter; in fact, I’ve had friends in New York write in “Allahpundit” as a gag and it ended up in the official returns. Intent is what counts, not some list. If the election ends up turning on that, it’ll be a Category Five political and legal hurricane. Which, from a conservative standpoint, would be awful, but from a blog content standpoint would be awesome.

Miller has already lawyered up to oversee the write-in counting process. It’s not crazy to think he’ll win a heavy majority of military absentees, but will that be enough? The lead is 13,000 votes (assuming all write-ins are valid and for Murkowski) and there are only a bit more than 30,000 absentee ballots outstanding. Judging by this video, you-know-who seems pretty confident.