As I don a flame retardant suit, let me say that if a potential candidate makes the cut with the voters by qualifying as a write-in, and people want to vote for that person, should their votes not count because of spelling when that decision is left to the judgment of one or a few people judging ballots in any given precinct? I’m just trying to look at this objectively. I detest Murmooski, but this is an issue of process and not personality or preference.
Suppose for a moment that major voter fraud occurred in a primary and our guy got the shaft. Considering how many “plants” the rats have put into the stream, this is not beyond the realm of possibility. If that happened, and we successfully undertook to get our guy qualified as a write-in as an independent or whatever, and he didn’t have an easy last name like ‘Jones’ but had a difficult last name, would we want the judgment as to the voter’s intent left to biased judges or would we want an opportunity for the voter to get it right?
I don’t know Alaska law and what all is possible, but I do know how it feels for my vote not to count, and I do know that election officials have too much power in terms of decision-making. Look what they’ve done to the military. I don’t have a knowledge base to know the right answer or even what all is possible for an answer in this case, but I’m not sure I want to see the issue dismissed out of hand altogether. The shoe can easily be on the other foot.
That all said, Go, Joe, GO!!!!!!!!! :)
It is not based on judgement, at least not in my state. It is based on what the candidate submitted as acceptable alternate spellings of their name at they time they registered as a write-in candidate.
The only judgment on a name would take place on deciding, for example, if it was an "e" or an "a" in the handwriting on the write-in ballot.