November 23, 2010

Here's an update on the senate race in Alaska: Last week Lisa Murkowski was declared the winner (in the press) after they finished tallying the write-in votes. She beat Joe Miller by just over 10,000 votes. But that was very short-lived. 

A few days later, an Alaskan federal judge ruled that Joe Miller's challenge to the counting of write-in ballots (he wanted to stop the state from determining voter-intent when it came to misspellings. Miller said spellings had to be perfect or thrown out) is valid and does raise "serious" legal issues. However, the federal judge said that it's a matter to be decided in a state court, not a federal court. In the interim, the federal judge granted a temporary injunction to stop the election results from being certified. The stipulation was that Miller would have to take his case to state court by Monday. (Full Story)

And that's exactly what Miller did. In addition to complaining about the way votes were counted (determining intent when it comes to phonetic spellings), he also complained that write-in candidates like Murkowski have a huge advantage because the state hand-reviews write-in ballots, but the ballots for other candidates went through automatic machines. That seems like a pretty lame complaint. How many people are actually on the side that write-in candidates have a better advantage than candidates whose names appear on the ballot?! I think Joe Miller (and his supporters) is the only one. Write-in candidates are often at a huge disadvantage. The fact that Murkowski seemingly won with a write-in campaign just goes to show how much Alaskans did not want Joe Miller to be their senator. And now he's also complaining about his ballots being counted by a machine whereas Murkowski's were hand-reviewed!? He is really stretching. Traditional ballots are designed to be read by machines. There's no "intent" involved. The whole reason write-in ballots are hand-reviewed is because it is hand-written and computers can't review that. And are you really going to throw out a vote because the voter wrote Merkowski? Counting that vote isn't a result of determining intent, it's a result of using common sense.

So now Miller is waiting for the state court to decide on the standard by which ballots should be judged. The Miller campaign has already said that after the court rules, Miller wants a hand count. I assume that means he wants a hand recount of all the votes. What a huge waste of time that would be. Murkowski is ahead of Miller by 10,328 votes. There are 8,159 ballots contested by Miller observers. Even if those were thrown out, she'd still be ahead by 2,169 votes.  Just give it up already, Miller. Even the Alaska Republican Party has urged Miller to concede. (Full Story)