Alaska election: Joe Miller comments

“What is the status of the election? When will we know who won? or who stole it.”

It depends on how the judge rules. First, I expect the judge to rule that ALL ballots must be counted in a similar manner, i.e. that if Murkowski votes are hand counted and the counters are allowed to determine “voter intent”, then ALL ballots are to be counted in the same manner. So far Miller’s ballots have ONLY been counted by machine with the machine throwing out many ballots that may have a partial erasure in one of the bubbles causing it to invalidate the ballot. Other ballots may have been invalidated because the voter didn’t fill out enough of the bubble beside the name. Again, ONLY the ballots with write ins were hand counted and given special consideration. If the judge rules for some reason that you can count some ballots one way and other ballots a different manner, they will quickly be slapped down because the Supreme Court settled this in 2000.

Second, Miller will ask the judge to apply the law as written, i.e. that the bubble must be filled out next to the write in blank and the name of the person they want to vote for must be written AS IT APPEARS on the list of write in candidates. It is less likely that the judges will follow the law because so many are beholding to Murkowski’s family.

If that fails, Miller should appeal on the grounds that the judge is biased because he was placed on the bench by the Kow’s dad.

“I may be wrong, but I think they ruled you couldn’t change the rules after the election.”

If you are talking about Bush vs. Gore in 2000, I think that the judges ruled that you had to use a uniform counting standard for ALL ballots cast, that no set of ballots could be given special consideration over others.

Second, Miller will ask the judge to apply the law as written, i.e. that the bubble must be filled out next to the write in blank and the name of the person they want to vote for must be written AS IT APPEARS on the list of write in candidates.

However, Murkowski already has more undisputed votes than Miller. The ballots with misspellings etc. have been challenged by the Miller campaign, but a lawsuit became moot when Murkowski pulled ahead on votes that the Miller's inspectors agree with.

So counting Miller's votes manually has to yield an additional 2,200+ votes (meaning that 2.5% of Miller's ballots were not counted by the voting machines). But even if that puts him over the 92,929 unchallenged votes for Murkowski, then the courts would have to go through the 8,159 disputed write-in votes. If media reports are to be believed, even the strictest interpretation of the law should yield a few more votes for Murkowski (where the name is spelled correctly and just the handwriting is a bit extravagant).

So is it likely that Miller gets enough votes for the voter intent question to even become relevant? To me it seems like a stretch. More likely than not this one is over.

This is great news; hope Joe is right on this one.

Miller emphasized, “Regardless of whether Ms. Murkowski is permitted to intervene, we are confident that the court will enforce Alaska law as written, invalidate the State’s illegal initial count, and require that every ballot be hand-counted in accordance with state law.”

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