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EDITOR'S NOTE: The vote totals were transposed in the original story. The story below is correct.

WASHINGTON -- The Division of Elections today begins counting more than 25,000 absentee and questioned ballots in the U.S. House Republican primary.

The late arrivals will decide who faces Anchorage Democrat Ethan Berkowitz in November.

Republican incumbent Don Young holds a thin lead against his challenger, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

Young so far has 42,548 votes compared to Parnell, who received 42,397 of the ballots cast.

The 151 vote difference amounts to a margin of less than two-tenths of a percentage point.

Gail Fenumiai, director of the state Division of Elections, said there are more than 14,900 absentee and more than 12,000 questioned ballots to be counted.

Absentee ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, but ballots mailed from outside the country are valid up to 10 days after the election. Overseas and military ballots are valid up to 15 days after the election.

Election officials aren’t certain how many of the outstanding ballots are from the Republican primary.

“We won’t know how many of the ballots will affect the close House primary race until they’re counted,” Fenumiai said.

Election workers will begin counting at 1 p.m. and are expected to be finished by 5 p.m. Updates will be posted on the Division of Elections’ Web site, www.elections.alaska.gov/.

There also are 257 ballots from Wrangell and Petersburg — where election workers ran out of regular ballots on election day and had to use sample ballots — that will be counted Monday.

A final count isn’t expected until Wednesday as officials wait for more absentee ballots to come in from overseas.

The elections review board has until Sept. 15 to certify the results.

A candidate can request a recount within five days of the election being certified.

The state will foot the bill for a recount if the results are within less than half a percentage point.

Otherwise, a campaign must put up $15,000 to cover the cost of a recount.

Despite the two-week delay in finding out the winner of the Republican primary, neither candidate has been sitting idle.

“We haven’t packed the campaign away in a little box or anything,” said Mike Anderson, Young’s campaign spokesman.

Both Young and Parnell are using the downtime to tweak their campaign strategies to take on Berkowitz, the former state House minority leader.

Young left his Fort Yukon home Tuesday and headed to Seattle for a campaign fundraiser.

Anderson said Young is optimistic about the outcome of the primary and has begun lining up fundraisers in October.

In the meantime, Anderson said the Young campaign is looking at areas of the state where Young performed well and seeing how that can be repeated elsewhere.

The Young campaign credits the televised debates between the two candidates with providing a big boost to Young, who trailed Parnell in several pre-primary polls.

“They gave voters a chance to look at Don Young, and they liked what they saw,” Anderson said.

“So the key is going to be the media buy.”

Parnell said he hasn’t had time to worry about the final vote tally.

“I’ve been too busy doing my job and getting ready for the general election,” he said. “I’ve also been watching the governor restore Alaska’s reputation on the national level.”

Gov. Sarah Palin, who has endorsed Parnell, was chosen a week ago to be Republican John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate.

The avalanche of outstanding ballots came as a surprise — the candidates were expecting a few thousand — but not necessarily a bad one, Parnell said.

“It’s all positive on my end,” he said. “We had a good absentee outreach program before the election, and the large number of questioned ballots shows there’s a lot of new people getting involved, which favors change.”

Anderson said he’s less concerned about the absentee ballots than the questioned ballots.

“The absentee ballots aren’t the issue. They’re either for Young or not,” he said. “And they tend to go to the incumbent.”

Since the primary, Parnell has sent out a fundraising letter and held an event in Fairbanks to thank his campaign workers.

Otherwise, he said, he’s been preparing for Berkowitz.

“Our underlying message is going to be the same, but we have a different opponent with a different voting record on spending, environmental and social issues than I do,” Parnell said.

“We want to let voters know about those differences.”

Berkowitz said he’s prepared for either Republican in the general election.

“This is about what direction I want to take the state, not who I’m running against,” he said.