This story keeps getting better and better. Last evening MSNBC was interviewing a state senator from Alaska who has been monitoring the vote count and he reported that the outstanding absentee and provisional ballots now totaled more than 91,000. The vote count will resume Wednesday.

All the experts are still puzzling why the voter turnout in Alaska was so much lower than anticipated, compared with previous elections there, and why the polling was so far off. Evidently even Sen. Stevens' pollster had predicted on the eve of the election that he would lose by 6 to 8 percentage points.

Could global warming have baked Alaskan brains?

Charley Noble