Lisa Murkowski, write-in campaign winner?

Dateline November, 3, 2010, Wasilla, Alaska. With most of the Alaska senate race completed, it's clear that "Write-in" is the winner of the Alaska senate race here, but the next question is "Who was written in?", and if Lisa Murkowski was the person voters intended to vote in, how many actually spelled "Murkowski" correctly?

If I didn't mention it here before, I have mentioned it to friends before that "Murkowski" is an unfortunate name for a write-in candidate, and I suggested she legally change it to something like "Lisa" just for this Alaska senate race (a one-word name, like Cher or Madonna).

The full results of the vote (as of now) look like this:

Write-in:      81,876
Joe Miller:    68,288
Scott McAdams: 47,414

(Scott McAdams is the person I've referred to as "The other guy" because very few people seemed to know who he is, and many people in the media misspelled his named.)

Alaska officials expect something like an additional 10% of voters to be sending in their votes by mail, so between the issue of Alaskans spelling "Murkowski" correctly, and those additional 10% votes, the Alaska senate race isn't expected to be resolved for several weeks. With the current totals, Ms. Murkowski needs her name to be spelled correctly about 84% of the time for her to officially still have more votes than Joe Mill and win the senate race. (Already there are discussions here in Alaska about whether her name needs to be spelled exactly right, or whether people can have one letter wrong, etc.)

If she wins the race, Ms. Murkowski will be only the second senator in U.S. history to win as a write-in candidate. I read this morning that Strom Thurmond (however you spell his name) was the other. In that regards, it would be cool to see the Murkowski write-in camp win.