THe letter of the law is a good standard to follow.
On the other hand, if someone puts murkowski with a ‘y’ on the end, it’s pretty clear they meant to vote for her. Should voters have their votes thrown out because they aren’t perfect spellers?
I think yes, because that’s how the statute is written, but it’s not an absurd argument to suggest that we should try to honor a vote, when it’s clear what they meant. (devining “clear intent” is a serious issue, and is why most laws are more legalistically written, but I think we could agree that if someone wrote “Lisa Murkowsky” that we know they meant to vote for Lisa).
It is hard for a candidate for public office to argue that they should win by throwing out clearly intended votes for the other candidate because of trivial errors.
Now, Franken did it with impunity in Minnesota, getting hundreds of clear Coleman votes thrown out on technicalities like “ballot marking”. Ballot marking is something that at some point in our history was considered a terrible act, which lead to many states making laws which throw out ballots if there are any identifying marks on them.
Nowadays, I guess because you can’t mark your ballot, nobody seems to be trying to use marked ballots for their nefarious purpose (which I believe was to ensure that people voted the way you paid them to vote). So now it seems odd that you can get a good ballot thrown out because of a tic mark made on the ballot somewhere. But that’s what can happen.
And in fact, even in this case, misspelling is in fact a method of ballot marking, because a person could “buy” write-in votes and ask that they be misspelled in a specific way to prove you voted the way you were paid to vote.
So you are advocating stealing votes from someone's aunt Lisa Murkowsky? Or from that nice lady down the street Lisa Merkowski? Or from the woman who owns the clothing store on the next street over Lisa Murcowski?
I don't think so. The law and justice says that the name must be spelled exactly correct. Otherwise we are clearly violating the intent of the voter to vote for someone other than Lisa Murkowski.
Then we need to figure out if they intended to vote for the failed rino Lisa Murkowski or some other Lisa Murkowski. How can we prove that the vote is actually for her?
I think yes, because that’s how the statute is written, but it’s not an absurd argument to suggest that we should try to honor a vote, when it’s clear what they meant.
It's incredibly absurd and even criminal to steal a vote from Lisa Murkowsky and give it to Lisa Murkowski.
(devining “clear intent” is a serious issue, and is why most laws are more legalistically written, but I think we could agree that if someone wrote “Lisa Murkowsky” that we know they meant to vote for Lisa).
I would assume they were voting for Lisa Murkowsky exactly as they wrote it. Why would you assume they are lying or incompetent? They wrote Lisa Murkowsky they obviously meant Lisa Murkowsky (Who by the way, is not the failed rino senator)
The law says spelling must be exact. Anything else is disenfranchising the voters.
And yet they want to exclude any write ins that have Joe Miller's name on them. They can't have it both ways, but they will try.
It's the Liberal Way