Alaska election officials will begin the process Wednesday of counting about 50,000 ballots from last week’s election that will go a long way toward establishing whether a Republican or Democrat will be declared the winner of the state’s coveted Senate seat.

Gail Fenumiai, the director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said in a letter posted on the agency’s website that “the division has over 70,000 outstanding absentee and early votes to count statewide.”

“By law, the division has until November 19th to review and count these ballots, Fenumiai said. “With the review of a large portion of these outstanding ballots being complete, the division feels it is in the best interest of the public, political parties and candidates to count ballots early.

“The ballots being counted on Wednesday… will include the outstanding absentee and early ballots received through November 4th in those districts where the voter history has been done and the cross-checking of names done. The division anticipates that approximately 50,000 ballots statewide will be counted November 12th.”

“The division did not count any absentee ballots election night because of the need to cross-check the names of absentee and early voters against the precinct registers to ensure the principal of one-person, one-vote.”

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens leads Democratic challenger Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, by about 3,000 votes.

But the Stevens and Begich campaigns have called the integrity of more than 20,000 ballots into question. Both camps are now seeking tens of thousands of dollars in donations from their supporters to pay for lawyers during a review process.

Last Thursday, Heather Rauch, Begich’s campaign manager, sent out an e-mail to Begich supporters seeking $50,000 for the campaign “so we can keep the campaign going until the final votes are counted.”

Mike Tibbles, Stevens’ campaign manager, sent out an e-mail to supporters in hopes of raising $75,000 “to cover the costs associated with the final vote counting and review of questioned ballots.”

Some Alaskans have suggested that the election had been stolen, based on early polls that showed Begich leading Stevens by double-digits going into Tuesday’s election.

Begich also said the numbers don’t add up.

“In the North Slope village of Wainwright, the Division of Elections doesn’t show a single vote for me, while the Libertarian candidate got 90, the non-partisan candidate received 84 and Senator Stevens got 8,” Begich said. “That just defies common sense. I flat out won five of the other seven villages on the North Slope.”

The polling website FiveThirtyEight.com said, “the emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest — voters told pollsters that they weren’t about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to.”

Nate Silver, one of FiveThiryEight’s pollsters, said when uncounted ballots are tallied Begich may “pull ahead” of Stevens and perhaps be declared the winner.

“Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska’s senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted – the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots – will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him,” Silver wrote in a blog post on the website.

Democrats and Republicans are watching the hotly contested senate race closely. If Begich prevails it will push Democrats closer to a 60-vote filibuster proof majority. There are still undecided races in Minnesota and Georgia.

Stevens, the longest serving Republican in the United States Senate, was convicted by a Washington, D.C. jury two weeks ago on seven felony counts of making false statements on Senate financial disclosure forms related to $250,000 in gifts he received from oil-field services company Veco Corp. and the company’s former Chief Executive Bill Allen.

Several high-ranking Republicans called on the embattled senator to resign prior to Election Day. But Stevens, 84, refused, stating he would appeal his conviction.

If Stevens is declared the winner of Alaska’s senate race he will face an automatic ethics investigation and it’s likely his colleagues will secure the two-thirds vote needed to expel him.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the Lexington Kentucky-Leader newspaper Oct. 29 that Stevens, now a convicted felon, “should resign immediately” to avoid expulsion.

“If he did not do that … there is a 100 percent certainty that he would be expelled from the Senate,” McConnell, told the Kentucky-Leader. “The Senate would have zero tolerance for the continued service of a convicted felon,” McConnell told the Kentucky-Leader.

One Republican senator began to move against Stevens on Monday.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., notified Senate Republican conference leaders that he would call on his colleagues next week to vote on kicking Stevens out of the caucus, according to a report published in Congressional Quarterly Monday.  

“To be ejected from the GOP Conference is not the same as being expelled from the Senate. Stevens, R-Alaska, would remain a senator and retain his floor voting rights, but he would not be able to participate in Republicans-only decisions, such as picking party leaders, and he would lose his committee assignments,” Congressional Quarterly reported.