I agree. I have no dog in this fight, but a voter in Alaska who writes “Mercowski” or “Mircowski” is obviously trying to vote for Lisa Murkowski. It’s silliness to argue otherwise. Those votes should count, IMO.
You want to ignore the law then?
Some people misspelled her name intentionally because they hate her guts.
Their intent is not to vote for her.
Yup, law are such a nuisance:
Do read this Wall Street Journal report, which shows how in a very close race (which is probably unlikely) the result could turn upon application of the Democracy Canon to construe the relevant statute. For further background, here’s the relevant statutory language for counting write-ins in Alaska (AK 15.15.360):
(10) In order to vote for a write-in candidate, the voter must write in the candidate’s name in the space provided and fill in the oval opposite the candidate’s name in accordance with (1) of this subsection.
(11) A vote for a write-in candidate, other than a write-in vote for governor and lieutenant governor, shall be counted if the oval is filled in for that candidate and if the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate is written in the space provided....
(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.
If the voter is too careless or takes the right of voting so lightly that the voter does not put forth the effort to make sure that the vote is properly cast in accordance with the letter of the law, then it is not just silly but IDIOTIC to argue that the voter's intent should trump the rule of law.
Yeah, you’re right. Who cares about the law, or rules, or official balloting etc. Let’s just make the rules up, and change them as we go along....
Whatever suits you, right?
Elections are serious and when you consider less than 45% actually vote, why not make the voter adhere to the rules?
But I see you think differently.
When I was in college, I missed an A grade on a paper, because I failed to sign my name on each page of the test paper. I lost 5%.
I lost 10% on a grade for turning the paper in late...
At the time, I thought that I was being singled out and things unfair....maybe so.
But if we have no rules or laws upheld...then what do we have?
So we are to inferr intent? Shall we then hire Psychics. perhaps they can inferr intent before we vote and we won’t need pesky laws.
Do we really want to open up the pandora’s box of allowing the law to be ignored due to intent? really?
What do you think rat lawyers would do with THAT precedent????
I think people should have to solve a couple of word problems before they vote to show that they are capable voters.
To bad they can’t copy a name from a provided list of voters to a ballot.
No they shouldn’t.
The whole point of having primaries and having names printed on the ballot is so we can avoid situation where we have to guess who the voter intended to cast the ballot for.
Otherwise why even have primaries? Why not just have one big open write in election on Nov 2nd and forget the whole primary process.
Write-in candidates seriously distorts with the established voting process and hence should be extra penalized and discouraged. People should be elected based on ballots that are certain, not based on ballots that involve any guessing. So that the eventual winner is the one we *know* had more votes, not the now we *guessed* had more votes.
Not according to the law that preexisted the election. The law says that the last name, at a minimum, must be spelled correctly.
What if they were deliberately miss-spelling her name as a protest vote against her running as a write-in?
Some people announced their intention to do so — how do you know that you aren’t stealing their protest vote if you give it to Lisa?
How could people who actually wanted Lisa miss-spell her name, when it is on the write-in sheet they could ask to see, and when she had it on commercials every day, and handed out wristbands with the name?
Alaska makes it hard for write-in candidates, because they want to support the primary system. They make the write-ins register the name they want to use, and then make people vote using that name.
How do elections officials know that the voter didn’t intend to vote for an old family friend named Herbert Mercowski, but didn’t realize the write-in vote had to be for someone on the official list of write-in names (even though posting such a list inside the polling place violates Alaska elections law)?
if we toss out the law then those miller write in votes should count too.