The lawyers have started leaving. That is perhaps the surest sign that Joe Miller's chances of becoming the next senator from Alaska are evaporating. With each passing day that election workers here in the state capital manually count write-in votes cast for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, it appears increasingly likely that Alaskans spell too well for Miller's math to work. Assisted by lawyers sent by the Republican National Senatorial Committee, Miller campaign workers set out to challenge every smudge, stray mark and misspelling they could find (and, often, only they could find) on write-in votes that appeared to be for Murkowski. The plan was to question enough votes to close the 11,000-vote margin by which he trails -- and then to persuade the courts that those challenged votes should be discounted. Alaska law says write-in votes will be counted if the name or last name is written 'as it appears' on the candidate's declaration form. But Alaska election officials, citing legal precedent in the state, said they would count all votes in which they could determine 'voter intent,' misspellings aside. Now that dispute could become irrelevant. After three days of counting, the state has determined that 98 percent of write-in ballots were cast for Murkowski -- and 90 percent of those were cast so cleanly that they have survived even the sometimes bafflingly strict scrutiny applied by monitors working for Miller. Even if every ballot his campaign has challenged was thrown out in court, which is not likely, Miller would gain less than 10,000 votes. Several thousand absentee ballots that remain to be counted could help him narrow the margin, but probably not enough for him to win. The write-in count is expected to last several more days. Ben Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer who worked on the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential campaign and was brought to Juneau to work for Murkowski, left Friday night. At least three of the seven lawyers the National Republican Senatorial Committee hired to help Miller will have left by Saturday. Miller sent an e-mail to potential supporters Friday seeking donations to keep up the fight. In it, he repeated claims his campaign made this past week, from accusations of voter fraud to the withholding of public records by the state. He also said that Murkowski, by running as a write-in candidate after losing to Miller in the Republican primary in August, 'single-handedly sentenced the state to a divisive and expensive election.' 'We need your help in this fight. We're going up against state bureaucrats, the media and powerful insiders to keep Murkowski entrenched in D.C.,' the e-mail said. 'Click here to donate $100, $75, $50, or $25 today to the Joe Miller for U.S. Senate Recount Fund.' 