Posted on 11/11/2010 3:34:25 PM PST by mdittmar
Joe Miller, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for Alaska Senate, may be on the cusp of losing the Senate race to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who ran as a write-in candidate after losing the GOP primary to Miller.
There were more write-in votes than there were votes for Miller, and the vast majority of those ballots seem to have been cast for Murkowski. Miller chosen to address this by challenging votes that appear to have been for Murkowski even when there is only the smallest of justifications for doing so.
Consider: According to the Associated Press, an observer for Miller today challenged a vote that seemed to be for Murkowski because even though her name was spelled and printed correctly, the "L" in Lisa was written in cursive. (Or just have a look at the challenged ballot pictured above.)
Other challenges have been for sloppy handwriting or tiny misspellings - "Lisa Merkowski," for example. While it would seem to be obvious that a write-in for "Lisa Merkowski" is a vote for Murkowski, Miller doesn't want it counted.
Alaska officials have said they will take into account voter intent when considering the ballots - which presumably means that the "Merkowski" vote would go to Murkowski. But Miller's legal team argues that state law does not allow such an interpretation: If the name on a write-in ballot does not exactly match the name of the candidate, they say, it doesn't count.
The legal question will be settled next week, when Miller's legal challenge to the state's position will be heard in court. (Miller already filed suit to stop the count altogether, but a judge turned him down.) If Miller's camp can successfully challenge enough ballots to overcome Murkowski's apparent lead - and the courts decide that their interpretation of the law is correct - he will become a senator.
The issue isn't just a legal one, however. Should Miller triumph by disqualifying a large number of ballots despite clear voter intent, he will have essentially have "won" an election in which he was not the candidate for whom Alaskans tried to cast the most votes.
Alaska officials say they want to count votes for Murkowski that are less than perfect because it means not disenfranchising Alaskans simply for sloppiness or spelling errors. For Miller, however, what the voters meant appears to be less of a concern than finding a way to Washington.
The voters knew before the election that the spelling had to be correct. The Murkowski campaign spent alot of money to teach the voters the proper spelling. The law was clear to everyone beforehand. If after all that they still could not spell the name correctly than that is too bad.
(b) The rules set out in this section are mandatory and there are no exceptions to them. A ballot may not be counted unless marked in compliance with these rules.
I’m not a lawyer, but I see a case here if the English language means anything.
You notice how they conveniently left out of the article about the absent ballots.
Had Murcowski run as a “write-in”, from the very beginning, would she have won?
I hope Joe takes every avenue the law affords him in at least humiliating her, since he can’t seem to stop her.
Why wouldn’t he wait for them to be counted. What will those absentees think, their vote isn’t good enough.
Miller ran a lousy campaign.
My guess is that it might have had something to with all those “hanging chads”. Poor chad, one hanging should have done the trick....
Do the right thing? The right thing was for Lisa chicken-neck to concede and back Joe when he won the primary.
Hell to the NO about him conceding. Fight to the finish, I say. Or we’ll allow the Al Freakens of this country to steal every election, and they’ve done a darned good job of it so far.
The will of the voters WASN’T respected when she lost, was it? Once again, hell to the NO.
I agree
It's like all democRATs/socialists/liberals/progressives, if they accuse you of something, that means that they are doing it themselves. Rules for Radicals, right 0bama?
5.56mm
I agree
This is most reasonable post I have seen on this thread.
Thanks mdittmar. SeeBS.
The challenge to that ballot is apparently that the names although corectly spelled, are in reverse order. The correct order being first name space last name with no comma.
Especially since Murkowski ran ads on tv and radio telling people how to vote properly and spell her name. She had bracelets made up that had a oval on them and then said "fill it in" and then had her name on it. She also sued so her name could be given to voters in the polling place. And let us not forget before the election there was talk of her trying to buy her way on the ballot as a democrat or libertarian. And why was that? Because she and others knew her named had to be spelled properly on the ballots.
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