Posted on 11/09/2010 6:12:41 AM PST by no dems
The count of the AK Senate Race Absentee Ballots takes place today. Currently, the total Write-in votes exceed Joe Miller's total vote count by 13,500 votes. There are 31,000 Absentee Ballots to be counted today. Absentee Ballots, which contain many military votes, normally go heavily Republican. Lisa Murkowski's name was not on the Absentee Ballot and the people who vote Absentee very seldom do the "Write-in" thing. If they do, it, many times, is not done correctly. So.......
If Joe Miller's lead, after the count of the Absentee Ballots, exceeds the 81,000 Write-in Ballots, which did not all go for Lisa anyway, turn out the lights; the party's over.
Bit true, Murkowski will get a bunch of the those 31,000 votes as well, to add to her write in total on election day.
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.
Of course, there will be a LOT of write-ins in the absentee ballots. IN fact, if I had been on the murkowski team, I would have been pushing the use of absentee ballots, because it is a lot easier to “help” your supporters to spell your name write on an absentee ballot.
Because you can’t take paper into a voting booth, but you can have a paper on your desk with the name spelled on it while filling out your absentee ballot.
My hope is just that Miller beats Murkowski in the absentee ballots, tightening up the race to where failed write-ins could be enough to give him the election.
I would be shocked if he came close to wiping out the write-in deficit with the absentee ballots.
“breaking news” is a category within forum posts. They cause the post to show up on the “breaking news” sidebar on the right of the screen, which makes it easier for people to find and read.
You’d hardly want to put something in “breaking news” because you didn’t want people to read it.
My guess is that they know the normal number of write-ins, and can compare that to the number of write-ins for this race and figure that the different is all Murkowski votes.
But I haven’t actually seen any posts which say how many write-in ballots there were in, say, the 2008 race.
We also know that a percentage of write-ins are usually jokes or misspellings. But using percentages in this case would be irrational — there is no reason to believe that in a race where a solid well-funded well-known candidate drives up the write-ins by a factor of 10, that this would mean 10 times as many people would also write in joke names.
So if I were trying to guess the results, I’d look at the 2008 write-in votes that were invalid, subtract that NUMBER (not percentage) from the 2010 write-ins.
She did an excellent job arguing her two main points: First that the primary was “stolen” by an outside group with lots of money who didn’t understand Alaska, and second that Miller’s positions on pork spending would cost Alaska billions of dollars in aid that a majority of the citizens benefit from, and so they should vote for her to protect their “livelyhoods”.
We see that 2nd argument in the federal contractor telling his workers to vote Murkowski to make sure they still have jobs.
Toss in the attacks on Miller which served to dampen enthusiasm with his base (like how he used all these federal subsidies he was fighting to end), the attacks which made him look less desirable (arresting the reporter, the “scandal” about his previous employment), and you have a recipe for victory for Murkowski.
Miller had answers to the attacks, but from here didn’t seem to do a good job of actually getting his side out.
Seems obvious that the absentee ballots would most likely have been cast early. Being early, Murkowski wouldn’t have yet made her last-ditch run. Therefore, I’d be surprised if Murkowski were on more than a handfull of absentee ballots.
Alaska is a traditional republican state and soldiers, in particular, tend to be conservative voters.
Since Murkowski now has zero votes at all and Miller has over 67000, then Murkowski has to get 67,500 of the write-in votes just to catch up with Miller.
But, what if Miller gets 55% of the 31000 absentee ballots and Murkowski gets none since she wasn’t on the absentee ballot? 55% is 17050 votes. Add that to Miller’s 67500 and Miller has 84550 to Murkowski’s nothing.
Can Murkowski get 84,550 votes? Uhhhh....NOOO!
There are only 81000 write in votes. If she got every single write-in vote, and there are only 81000 of them, she can never get 84,550 votes. It is impossible.
plus murkowsky had unliminted money and access to mailing lists to do direct mail and “murky” products.
SAY WHAT??!?
I’m overjoyed that bitch might lose. We have an uncalled race here with the same situation. You don’t think killing off Murkowsky wouldn’t be breaking news!?
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.
Good summary. This is how I see it as well.
I will assume that the vast majority of write ins are for Cow, and that the AKGOP establishment will bend over backwards to count everything her way on that score.
However, I think the odds of a significant number of people writing in Cow on their absentee ballots do not seem very good. Is there even a space for a write in? How effective was Cow's campaign in reaching out to absentee voters? I live nowhere near Alaska, and I was *shocked* that many people wrote in Cow's name.
Look, the Ill. Dems will not even validate Mark Kirk’s Senatorial election yet. The Dems will work with Lisa to somehow win this race. If Miller ever wins, the Second Coming will have come. In fact, Joe better rev up his campaign to run against the Dem Senator in a few years.
“If his Absentee vote total (out of the 31,000 Absentee Ballots) ADDED TO HIS 67,500 VOTES exceeds the 81,000 uncounted write-in ballots, then it’s over.”
>>>This thread reminds me of the “Christine can win!” threads prior to Nov 2nd. Joe will not win, sadly.<<<
I live in Alaska, and I have to unfortunately agree. Miller simply did not run a very good campaign, and Murkowski’s campaign was simply brilliant. My home town is predominantly Native, and she got together the Native vote with some strategic backing and speaking at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference just before the election.
Just after the primary, Alaska pollster Dave Dittman said Miller would win because Murkowski would split the Democrat vote with Scott McAdams. Murkowski must have heard this and went out of her way to gather up the Democrat vote for herself.
The only good news is that the Native community will now feel quite comfortable voting Republican in the future.
There is a possibility that Lisa will actually move more to the right in an effort to co-opt the Miller vote. She’s a strategist, not an ideologue (another way of saying she’s a RINO who will sway with the wind... but the wind is currently blowing right).
A secondary possibility has to do with Palin. Sarah upset Lisa’s dad for the governorship, and the Alaska RINO party is no supporter of Palin. In that case, Lisa might have been the right-in candidate out of spite - and she might do the same thing once in power again.
I guess we’ll see. At least Lisa’s better than our prominent other senator, Mark Begich (Socialist-Alaska).
Just because Murkowski wasn’t on the absentee ballot doesn’t mean that she won’t get any absentee votes—one can vote for write-ins with absentee ballots just as with regular ballots.
I think that there are valid reasons to be hopeful that Miller will get far more absentee votes than Murkowski will, but to assume that she will get close to 0 absentee votes when write-ins were 41% of all ballots cast on election day (and by all accounts the overwhelming majority of absentees were cast by Murkowski voters, although not all will be valid votes) defies logic.
>>>Alaskan law clearly states the write-in candidate’s name MUST be spelled correctly<<<
Not correct.
Alaska law sides heavily with “voter intent,” meaning that a variety of misspellings are acceptable. Even “Lisa M” would have been acceptable before the Anchorage talk show host got dozens of people to flood the elections division with write-in names - including a “Lisa M. Lackey.” However, someone writing “Lisa Murko” or “Lisa Mercowsky” would still be counted as a vote for Murkowski.
The premise for giving the vast majority of absentee ballots to Miller was that he was the Repub candidate, on the ballot, there was no “write-in” list included in those ballots, and Murkowski hadn’t really surged ‘til the end of the campaign and absentee ballots are, by definition, generally cast more than just a day or two before the election.
Joe Miller has 67500 votes now. Murkowski as of now has zero votes.
There are 31,000 absentee ballots.
There are 81,000 write-in ballots.
Miller’s 67,500 + “X number of absentee ballots” exceeds 81000 write-in ballots.
That is 81000-67500 = 13,500 + 1 = 13,501
If Joe Miller gets 13,501 of the absentee ballots added to his 67,500 election day votes, then he has 81,001 votes, and it is then unimportant how many of the 81000 write-in ballots that Murkowski gets. She could get every single one of them and she’d still be one vote behind Joe Miller.
I listened to Fox News this afternoon on this race, and they refuse to give this real news and continue to talk only of the write-in ballots and ignore the absentee ballots.
There are 81,000 write-in ballots and 31,000 absentee ballots for a total of 112,000 ballots not counted.
I am assuming that Murkowski gets very few of the absentee ballots because they were sent out before she surged, ran her write-in campaign ads, and there was not a list of write-in names in those absentee ballot packets so far as I know.
I agree with everything you just wrote (although I would posit that absentee voters not having a “write-in” list isn’t such a terrible disadvantage for Murkowski, since such voters could look up how to spell her name when casting a ballot), and, as I posted before, I believe that there are valid reasons to be hopeful that Miller will get far more absentee votes than Murkowski will. But there’s a huge difference between saying that absentees will give Murkowski a (perhaps much) smaller percentage than what she got on election day and saying that she will get close to 0 absentees.
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