Two Senate races from the November 3 midterms are still uncalled, a full week after election day: Alaska and Mississippi. Saturday’s anchor on this page walked through what to expect in both of them, and what it expected was a wait. The wait is what happened. Here is where the counting stands tonight.

Alaska first. In the Associated Press count, Democrat Mary Peltola leads by 637 votes. That is the whole margin, and it comes with the wrinkle Saturday’s anchor flagged: the ballot also carried a namesake, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., and he drew 3,600 votes — more than five times the gap between the two leaders. Whatever those voters intended, the pile of ballots with the other Sullivan’s name on it is larger than the margin this race will be decided by.

The fight over that second Sullivan started before a single vote was cast. In June, the Division of Elections removed him from the ballot — its director wrote that the candidacy was for the purpose of confusing or misleading voters and compromising the fairness of the ballot. The state’s courts put him back on; the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed it on June 29. He appeared on the ballot with no party listed beside his name, a few lines from “Sullivan, Dan S.,” the two-term senator.

In October, the Justice Department sued to block certification of the result if the senator lost and the namesake’s votes would have changed the outcome, and to have the ballots that ranked the namesake segregated. The department’s complaint alleged that the sole purpose of the candidacy was to benefit the Peltola campaign. On November 1, Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the suit: the government lacked standing, and it had offered no workable way to segregate ballots without breaking ballot secrecy. The department appealed the same day. A federal criminal investigation into the candidacy has been running for months — the U.S. Attorney confirmed it on October 30, and FBI agents have questioned the namesake’s donors. No one has been charged. The namesake’s own account is simpler: Sullivan is his name, and his grandfather’s name. So his 3,600 votes stand as cast. Nothing transfers them to the senator, and certification is not blocked.

What decides Alaska is the count itself. The ranked-choice tabulation is scheduled for November 18, and certification for November 25. The Peltola campaign, for its part, has sued the Division of Elections over records for the rejected absentee ballots — which ballots were rejected, and why. That suit seeks the records; it does not change a single vote in the tally, and a hearing is expected this week.

Mississippi is the same shape, with bigger piles of paper. In the Associated Press count, Democrat Scott Colom leads Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by 2,574 votes — 467,930 to 465,356, with about 97 percent of the expected vote counted. That margin has barely moved since Friday, because what is left is not ordinary ballots. Secretary of State Watson has estimated between 12,000 and 20,000 affidavit ballots statewide — votes cast in sealed envelopes by people whose ID, registration, or eligibility had to be confirmed afterward — a pile several times the size of the margin, plus some 3,300 mail ballots that count if they were postmarked by election day and arrived by today.

The calendar closed in on that pile today: mail ballots had to be received by 5 PM this afternoon, and voters who cast affidavit ballots for lack of a photo ID had until the same hour to cure them at the circuit clerk’s office. Counties certify on Friday, November 13. Mississippi has no automatic recount — if the loser wants another look, it runs through a courtroom, not a statute. Riding in those envelopes, besides a Senate seat: Colom, a district attorney whose nomination to a federal judgeship Hyde-Smith once blocked, would be Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.

So here is where things stand tonight. Two Senate races, seven days after the vote, both still being counted. One is waiting on a tabulation that cannot start until November 18, shadowed by a court fight over the second Sullivan on its ballot and a criminal investigation nobody has been charged in. The other is waiting on a pile of envelopes several times its margin, with certification set for Friday. Saturday’s anchor said these two would take a while. They are taking a while. And worth saying plainly: neither race changes who leads the Senate in January. The Democrats hold the chamber whichever way both of them fall; these two decide the size of the majority, nothing more. We will keep an eye on both.

Read more:

Saturday’s anchor — what this page expected in both races

The Alaska race — the count, the lawsuit, the tabulation date: Associated Press coverage of the Alaska Senate race

The other Sullivan — the removal, the Justice Department suit, and the dismissal: Reuters and Alaska Public Media reporting

The Mississippi count — the margin and what is left: Associated Press count, via Mississippi Free Press live coverage

The affidavit ballots and the deadlines: Mississippi Secretary of State Watson’s figures, via wire reporting