Elections workers today are counting about 25,000 absentee and questioned ballots that may finally determine the winner of the Republican primary for the U.S. House seat now held by Rep. Don Young. The results should be known sometime late today.

After election night, Young led Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell by 151 votes out of 93,566 cast in the race. A third candidate, state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, trailed far behind.

Division of Elections director Gail Fenumiai said in an e-mail that she expects the new results to be posted sometime after 5 p.m. today.

Elections workers first have to determine how many of the 25,000 ballots are eligible to be counted. Absentee ballots that were mailed must have been postmarked by election day, and all the votes must be checked to determine if they were cast by registered voters.

Tonight's results will include 204 votes from Petersburg and 53 from Wrangell that were not counted on election night, Fenumiai said. Precinct workers in those towns ran out of Republican candidate ballots and substituted sample ballots instead, which were not included in the electronic tally on election night.

Absentee ballots mailed by voters who are overseas will be accepted until Wednesday, when they will be counted and added to the final tally.

Unless either Young or Parnell manages to build a significant lead in the latest count, a recount is possible if not likely. Under state law, the state pays the costs of recounts if the difference is within five-tenths of a percent of the total votes cast. In the Young-Parnell race, that should be around 500 votes.