Posted on 11/16/2010 2:56:45 PM PST by Qbert
Princess Lisa now leads by about 1,700 votes after Monday's review. There are still about 8,000 write-in ballots and 600 absentees to be counted. It's not looking good given that the Division of Elections is counting 97% of the write-ins for Murkowski, despite the fact that thousands of the ballots do not spell her name correctly, a requirement in the actual law.
Via the Anchorage Daily News:
The Division of Elections has now counted 92,164 votes for Murkowski and 90,458 for Miller. Murkowski's number will grow as the state continues to go through write-in ballots today, looking to see what name voters wrote on them.
[...]
"It's hard for me to figure that they would be able to look at these numbers and come up with any reasonable move other than facing the fact that Lisa Murkowski won the election," Sweeney said.
The Miller campaign insists that's not the case. Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto said he still thinks the court challenge could get enough votes thrown out for Miller to win.
The review of write-in ballots began last Wednesday and should essentially finish in the next day or so. The Murkowski campaign's numbers show another 10,000 write-ins remain to be counted. It predicts that Murkowski is going to end up with a total exceeding 100,000 votes given the trend of the count.
That could give Murkowski a lead over Miller in the 10,000-vote range once the counting is over.
Miller ballot observers so far have challenged 7,601 of the votes the state has counted for Murkowski. Miller has filed a lawsuit asking the federal courts to throw out the challenged ballots that are misspelled or otherwise not written perfectly.
But some of the ballots that Miller observers challenged were clearly spelled right and looked to be filled in correctly. So it's likely that not all the challenged ballots would be tossed, even if Miller ended up winning the lawsuit.
Miller spokesman DeSoto, though, said the race is still in play. He said he believes Miller and Murkowski will end up with about the same total of votes, if you subtract the votes Miller challenged but the Division of Elections counted.
Miller argues that state law doesn't allow misspelled votes. But the state and the Murkowski campaign say Alaska courts have indicated in the past that if "voter intent" can be determined from the ballot -- such as if a slight misspelling still produced a name that sounded like "Murkowski" -- that should be the standard.
Miller has said he would drop the fight if it was obvious he couldn't win. But his campaign said Monday that time hasn't arrived.
"At the end of six days of ballot counting, the race between Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski is still very close," DeSoto said.
Unfortunately I have not been able to find that information anywhere. But, I do know that they will be counted tommorrow, the 17th. Also, Murkowski does NOT lead Miller.
Miller has 90,458 undisputed votes, Murkowski has 84,563, undisputed votes, plus 7,601 challenged ballots that were counted anyway, and 1,869 that were challenged and not counted. If you subtract that 1,869 she’s down about 180 votes. And we have no idea what’s going to happen with the challenged and counted votes which was done based on ‘intent’ rather than the Alaska law, nor do we know anything about the overseas and military ballots.
We can only speculate. I believe it is because of the Primary results in which Murkowski only got 3.2% or so of absentee ballots to Miller’s 13.5% that the Murkowski machine in the gov decided to look for ‘intent’ because they believe that Miller will get a lot more votes from the Military and since her name wasn’t on that ballot she probably won’t get many, if any at all! I also believe that this is the ‘reason’ behind the early count. This count was not supposed to start until 8 days after it did, that meant that the military ballots would have been in already since the count began on the 9th and 8 days means the 17th would have been the starting date, the date Military ballots and overseas ballots are due back!
This whole process has been Frustrating since no information is available on total military/overseas ballots sent out!
Does Murky take the same drugs as Palousie?
Those eyes......aaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!
It looks like the fat lady is not going to sing any time soon. Probably going to be a long court battle?
It could be carried on a long time if Miller can get it into a court that will hear the case or depending on how the ‘challenged and counted’ votes for Murkowski are handled. There currently are over 7,000 of ‘challenged and counted’ for Murkowski.
When we used to count the absentee ballots, we always had to count each name separately. For instance Lisa Murkowski is not considered the same person as Lisa J (or whatever) Murkowski. Even though you know they mean the same person, it counts as two different people! That’s why write in candidates always hand out cards and specifically show HOW to write in their name.
Whiners and crybabies. It was Miller’s race to lose, and he did a terrific job at doing so.
Laws are for the little people.
You are correct that information on the entire process has been hard to come by. I know the Divisions of Elections knows the number but like you I've not been able to find it anywhere. They certified to the Feds that they would meet the deadline of Sept 18, 2010 for the mailing of the UOCAVA ballots when they were asking to be removed from the lawsuit brought on by the Feds.
I hope you are right and Joe's lawyers really jump on top of this.
“The Minnesota election all over again.”
Irony: IIRC, Murkowski’s attorney Ben Ginsberg represented Norm Coleman in that election. He didn’t do a very good job (obviously).
I say fight to the bitter end, Joe...
Almost gave in to the temptation I have avoided for 12 years on Free Republic.
But, my record remains unblemished. We will let your comments stand in comparison to mine and let others be the judge.
I really hope she loses, but I’m still amazed that she was able to organize such a successful write-in campaign. How does that happen? I thought she wasn’t all that popular.
“I really hope she loses, but I’m still amazed that she was able to organize such a successful write-in campaign. How does that happen? I thought she wasn’t all that popular.”
I’d really like to see some kind of chain of custody on all those write-in ballots...
George Soros' work to get hardcore leftists installed as Secretary of State has made it difficult to ensure honest elections. Like Robin Carnahan in MO.
Mark
“Everyone of the thieving , librtyrobbing sobs in office were put there by a majority vote.”
True to a point, plus vote fraud. And if they are counting misspelled votes for Murkowski, and it’s their law to spell the write in correctly, that is fraud.
I believe that Miller is about to get screwed by the Republican Party Etablishment. From what I have read on Free Republic, their actions are right from the Democrat Party playbook. And they had their parrots on this forum crying how meanspirited that the Miller camp was for insisting that the law be followed.
This just proves once again that the only difference between the Country Club Republicans and the Democrats is in the spelling.
Underestimating the enemy is never a good idea. Joe Miller clearly got complacent thinking he could beat her since he had already done it once. He probably did not expect the RINO establishment in Alaska to sabotage his bid. A big mistake since she (through her father) is completely entrenched in Alaskan republican establishment. I think we all expected a Rubio v Crist repeat but that was foolhardy, in hindsight.
I only heard the write in Miller votes were tossed on some article and were not to be counted. The number was not tossed.
My point, if supposedly you bend over backwards for the voter to have Murk only be close, why not also count Miller votes accidentally cast as write in fashion as well as the regular way if the intention was to vote Miller and that can be determined?
I agree that if the write-ins are being counted based on “intent” then any write-ins for Miller should certainly count. I just have not seen any article with any numbers about whether there were any such write-ins or not.
I can even see why somebody would write-in Joe Miller. After all, the write-in ballots will all be visually inspected, whereas machine counted ballots might have their counts diddled with. Or ... some voters might have thought it would be cute for Murkowski to think all the write-ins must be for her, only to be embarrassed during the actual counting.
I think some people just got confused with the write in stuff.
Especially in her case. IIRC, it was a gift from Daddy, after all.
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