The former U.S. Army tank commander who won the battle for Alaska's Republican Senate nomination in August appeared Tuesday to be on the verge of losing the war for election to incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who launched a write-in campaign that wasn't supposed to have a chance.

She now leads challenger Joe Miller by 10,400 votes in the official standings, but his campaign has challenged 8,153 of those votes for faulty spelling or penmanship. And late Tuesday the Miller campaign announced it wanted all of its computer-counted ballots hand counted -- just like Murkowski's were.

"The Murkowski write-in ballots have undergone a hand count review where spoiled ballots are being counted for her, whereas the Miller ballots have all been counted by machine with many valid ballots not being included," Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto said in an e-mail.

It was unclear what ballots DeSoto was referencing, but election observers were of the opinion he was most likely talking about votes computers would not read because voters did not fully blackout the oval designating their candidate. That could lead to another lawsuit over what qualifies as a valid vote. The state Supreme Court has ruled in past cases that if voters fail to black out the oval, too bad; the vote doesn't count.

But ovals might not be the only problem. "The count itself is also suspect due to past problems with machine counting in Alaska," DeSoto said. "Given how close the vote totals are, Miller needs to be given the same opportunity of having all of his ballots inspected and counted by hand to ensure every vote cast for him is counted."

Both sides do at least at this point seem to agree nearly all of the votes have been counted. A few hundred special advance ballots remain to be tallied. Miller's camp says some of those are from service personnel overseas, and the candidate believes they will vote heavily for him. The Murkowski camp doesn't expect the new ballots to change the numbers much, if at all.

Miller has also filed lawsuits challenging the vote count in both state and federal courts and has lobbed accusations of vote fraud. He believes Alaska Native corporations, with assistance from the state Division of Elections, conspired to steal the election he was considering a done deal only a month ago.

In mid-September, Miller was laughing about Murkowski's write-in prospects. Fox News' Greta Van Susteren asked him in a September interview if he'd have to change his Tea Party strategy to beat Murkowski. "It doesn't change our strategy. In fact, we have two liberals now that we're campaigning against instead of one. It's almost if (Democrat) Scott McAdams and Lisa Murkowski are having their own primary. We already won ours," Miller said, chuckling.

Miller wasn't laughing on Tuesday, as a long week of counting write-in ballots and studying penmanship neared an end with Murkowski more than 10,000 votes in front. Miller had hoped to reach this point within challenged ballot range of Murkowski, which would have given him his best shot at a win in court. But he doesn't have enough challenged ballots.

Even if a court were to declare invalid the 8,153 votes his poll watchers challenged, Murkowski would still have a more than 2,200-vote lead over the man who beat her in the GOP primary in August. It appears now she can win even without the challenged ballots, some of which Miller's camp contested because they said "Murkowski, Lisa" instead of "Lisa Murkowski."

That has the Miller camp looking for other avenues of attack, including a full review of how the election was conducted. "The integrity of the vote is at issue," DeSoto charged, "and the people of Alaska must be able to trust the results are being accurately reported."