Lawyers dispatched to Alaska to help Tea Party favorite Joe Miller challenge votes for his opponent have left the state, according The New York Times:
Ben Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer who worked on the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential campaign and was brought to Juneau to work for Ms. Murkowski, flew out on Friday night. At least three of the seven lawyers that the National Republican Senatorial Committee hired to help Mr. Miller will have left by Saturday.
The lawyers' departure is the latest sign that Miller's challenge to unseat Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski may have failed.
Ballot counters have gone through 88 percent of precincts. So far, Murkwoski has won 89.8 percent of write-in votes in Alaska's hotly contested Senate race.
On Saturday, Miller said he won't spend a lot of time, energy and effort fighting over ballots in Alaska's still-undecided Senate race if the math doesn't add up in his favor.
Miller said he won't make any announcements until after absentee ballots come in next week from military voters -- a constituency the Army veteran believes could go heavily for him.
But Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's campaign is confident that if the trend holds, she'll win re-election.
Earlier this week, Miller's camp challenged a write-in ballot in which a voter wrote the "L" in Murkowski's first name in cursive.
The tally comes as parts of Alaska begin to enter 7-10 weeks of darkness.