Incumbent Lisa Murkowski has been declared the winner of Alaska’s senatorial election after a week of ballot counting. She is the first U.S. Senate candidate in over 50 years to win a write-in campaign.
The senator’s opponent, Tea Party idol Joe Miller, tried to turn the election into a spelling bee. He asked the federal court to throw out write-in ballots with slight variations of the senator’s name. The court declined to do so.
The name of the U.S. district court judge who ruled on the spelling issue: Ralph Best Biest Beistline.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Tags: "Tea Party", Alaska, Congress, elections, GOP, Joe Miller, Lisa Murkowski, mid-term elections, Murkowski, Republicans, Senate, spelling
NotionsCapital 
November 18, 2010 at 10:22 am
Actually, Joe Miller asked the federal court to uphold the current Alaska election law that says that all write in ballots be spelled correctly.
All though I agree that some of the mis-spellings show intent for that candidate and I understand her argument to count them, it does not stay with in the rules of the election. And 12(b) shows that there can be no exception to this rule.
There is voluminous federal case law about the “voter intent” you mention. In point of fact Mr. Miller’s suit was brought on this point — he claimed that the misspellings were a form of protest showing voter intent to opppose Senator Murkowski, a claim as bogus as the rest of Mr. Miller’s blather. -ml