Miller-Murkowski Senate Race (Alaska) Enters Final Stage

Republican Party candidate Joe Miller has entered what may be the end game strategy against incumbent U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski in filing suit in through out more than 8000 contested write in ballots. Murkowski presently leads by about 10,000 votes. Certification of the election victory for Murkowski is on holding pending adjudication.

It is very difficult to defeat an incumbent federal politician. More than 90% stay in office with the help of money betting on the existing power for pork barrel politics. Alaska lt. Governor Campbell is unhappy with Miller's effort to throw out state election official's right to interpret write-in votes giving an advantage to Murkowski.

The core issue is; should write in votes need to be correctly spelled? In a future election if a Joe Smith were Running against Jane Smythe, should election officials be allowed to interpret the intent of the voter? Another issue is should the state change its rules for interpreting ballots each election to give an advantage to a particular candidate-in this instance Lisa Murkowski?

With more than 180,000 votes cast the election narrows down to just a few thousand. Equal protection of the law may require the letter of the law to be fulfilled in technical issues for justice to prevail.

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p.s.- On what interpretation of a vote is.. etc.

These are write in ballots spaces for Murkowski or whomever. Personally I believe that for a vote to count for anything it must count for whatever it was written as.

If a vote is for Listsub Mergekowski than that's who should get the vote (if such a person exists). A theory of names by Russell and Kripke differ of course, yet common sense on political balloting makes the use of 'interpretation' of writing mean something other than what it is implicitly dangerous to honest democratic elections.

Alaska has not certified the election. Instead, the state court system will listen to arguments regarding the subjective interpretation of ballots that Murkowski benefited from. Such subjective interpretation by election officials of voter intent is certainly a means to admit corrupt into future elections.

Can election rules be changed every election to benefit incumbents? If Jane Smit runs against Jan Smith is it the right of an election official to determine voter intent in miss spelling a name? File clerks might affirm that a zillion odd names exist, that voters might want to actually vote for some one with a similar name yet not well known, and that misfilings of votes and names are possible.

Palin did not split the Alaska vote-she split the Democratic vote. It was Democratic women voters defecting from their party to vote for gender that re-elected Lisa Murkowski. The Democrat guy only got 22% of the vote-about the number of male Democrats in Alaska I think.