Posted on 11/03/2010 12:26:38 PM PDT by TitansAFC
In another boon for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, write-in ballots cast for Republican candidate Joe Miller won’t count toward his total vote count. Alaska’s Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, who oversees elections, told the Associated Press that write-in ballots for Miller will be tossed out.
That's playing to the rules THEY made up as they went along. That's ALSO SOMETHING NOT TO BE ENCOURAGED. A Judge can't invent the law to favor one party's circumstance, and that is what happened.
He needed to be a write-in candidate on the list. He wasn't.
Did any Republican Freepers write her in? This is crazy.
In Alaska, you actually have to file to be a write-in. People cannot just write in a name and have the vote count.
http://touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/STATUTES/Title15/Chapter25/Section105.htm
This is so obvious. If Joe Miller’s write-in ballots do not count, then that means that he has won. Might as well stop counting right now.
I guess I don’t see how the voter intent wouldn’t matter, as this contest was well-known as one with a write-in candidate. Do the voters know that votes written in for anybody BUT those on the official list would not be counted? Was this clearly posted somewhere or explained to each voter? Is it written on the ballot anywhere?
If not, If I were a voter that wrote his name to make a point, I would claim that I was being disenfranchised. Hey, it works for democrats.
I wonder if people really did this, or if they are simply preparing in case some did.
How about the military, will they manage to keep those out too?
No, they're not. Neither went though the process to become one because they were on the ballot.
Who knows...but he’s who they intended to vote for!
Alaskan Mafia fraud.
You can misspell her name and it’ll count
I agree with you. I don’t see how this is any different than the common practice in the State of New York for candidates to seek nominations for multiple party lines on the ballot. Good conservative candidates can often get nominated by three parties (Republican, Conservative and Right-to-Life, for example), which can be a big deal in close races.
“I am heartsick to learn that Alaska, in spite of its isolation, has sucumbed to the virulent disease of American corruption!”
Ditto. I used to work elections in Anchorage, for both state and city elections, and everything was so clean then. Now I’m ashamed of the state where I spent the best years of my life.
That can be taken to court ... it directly contradicts established law in Alaska. The state supreme court ruled otherwise ... but I recall the Florida SC being overturned for changing the rules on the fly a few years back.
“could someone explain to me why there would even be one write in vote for Miller?”
The person who compiled the list of write-in names could have added Miller’s to cause mayhem later on. His name shouldn’t have been on the list to begin with — but I understand that it was. Natives in many of the bush villages aren’t sophisticated about the voting process and could be easily confused.
Is that position really tenable when Murkowski's getting "an intent of the voter" allowance? I could see this turning into something very, very ugly
I'm pretty sure that since he was an actual candidate for a federal election, this ploy will fail miserably. After all the voter's intent was perfectly clear, and the statutory language clearly applies only to write-in candidates, which he was not.
And if there's any other language regarding spoiled ballots, this statement alone will provide cause for the ploy to wilt under the scrutiny of equal protection.
Hopefully Miller is "lawyered up" and ready for trouble.
“The question I would have is why in the hell would you write in Miller’s name instead of simply voting for the guy using his actual place on the ballot?”
One could go insane questioning the methods of the average voter.
“why there would even be one write in vote for Miller?”
For one reason, because they’re stupid. Also, maybe because they’re stupidly impish.
“Clue time, he’s on the ballot people, no one should have written his name in.”
And no one should get addicted to crack, either. But they do.
“You can misspell her name and it’ll count”
Which is nice for a person named “Murkowski.” If I started a write-in campaign, just to be safe I’d change my name to something like “Peter Smith.”
AHHHH the memories, it was so cool how the freepers got on a bus to Florida, and stopped them from taking the hanging chads into a private room to count them, otherwise we would be further down the road to extinction from Sore of SoreLoserman’s phony global warming. I think that loss helped Lieberman become a better politician.
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