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- - Joe Miller sues (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/157989-joe-miller-sues.html)

Tully Mars

11-10-2010 02:32 AM

Joe Miller sues

Joe Miller is suing in Alaska to keep votes that are spelled incorrectly from counting...

Quote:

GOP nominee Joe Miller sued Tuesday to keep the state from using discretion in counting write-in ballots in Alaska's hotly contested Senate race, setting off what could become a drawn-out legal battle.

Story here

So do you think misspelled votes should count?

Personal I think if the intent of the voter is clear an election should not become a spelling bee.

On the other side I really want to see a guy who's family is on medicaid from a state that receive more in pork then any other state go to DC and fight against those things.

That's a show I'll watch.

scout

11-10-2010 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars (Post 2840273)

So do you think misspelled votes should count?

Personal I think if the intent of the voter is clear an election should not become a spelling bee.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

Rekna

11-10-2010 07:17 AM

I think in doing this he has ruined his chance of ever being elected for any other position. What he has now said is that he doesn't care about what the voters want but instead that he wants to be in power.

Cimarron29414

11-10-2010 08:38 AM

My initial thought was, "If the wrote 'Lisa M-ski'," count it.

Then, I read the article and it says that state law specifically says that the name must appear exactly as on the candidate's declaration. This is unfortunate, but the law. I hate to say it, but I think the law has to be followed. We all know what happens, when there is not a law, and we let the politicians make it up as they go along (2000).

For the record, I don't know anything about either of the candidates, so I don't really care who gets the seat.

Tully Mars

11-10-2010 10:01 AM

Murkowski is a long time politico from a political family. Her father was the senator and when elected governor he assigned the seat to her. Murkowski senior lost the governorship to Palin, a lot of bad blood between Palin and the Murkowskis. Miller is a Gulf war vet and tea party favorite. He was a tank commander during the first Gulf War and went on to earn a law degree from Yale.

I really don't care for either person. I do think the intent of the voter should be up held. But I'd like to see what Miller does in the senate. Coming from a state the get a tone of federal dollars in pork every year and claiming you're going to end it would be interesting.

ASU2003

11-10-2010 10:07 AM

She was giving out wristbands, and people could take a piece of paper into the voting booth with them. There really is no excuse to mis-spell it.

However, her name should have been on the ballot, if she could get a petition with enough signatures.

Rekna

11-10-2010 10:27 AM

Most states error on the side of voter intent. Also there is a legal argument to be made that forcing a correct spelling would be a literacy test on voters which I'm pretty sure was made illegal by the civil rights act.

Tully Mars

11-10-2010 10:42 AM

I don't think there was time to gather signatures and get her name on the ballot. She ran GOP in the primaries and lost to Miller.

I have no idea what the state election law is in Alaska, whatever it is it should be followed regardless of who that favors.

Charlatan

11-10-2010 09:47 PM

It would have smelled better if a third party brought the law suit rather than Miller.

Wes Mantooth

11-10-2010 10:38 PM

Theoretically I think, yes if you can tell who the vote is for and the will of the people should be upheld, however if there is a law that says names must be spelled exactly as they appear then I think the law (no matter how silly it is) should be followed. Hopefully after this fiasco they will take a look at that and maybe change it so it isn't quite so stupid.

I could see how somebody who isn't a very good speller or just drew a blank or something could wind up writing Murcowsky. Or better yet how easy would it be to write Murkowsky? Stupid law.

Lesson to all future politicians change your name to something ridiculously easy to spell if you plan on launching a write in campaign.

dc_dux

11-11-2010 05:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wes Mantooth (Post 2840664)

Courts rely on case law as much as the letter of the law and there are numerous cases where courts ruled in favor of "voter intent" - the most obvious being the Supreme Court in Bush v Gore.

loquitur

11-11-2010 03:56 PM

It totally depends on what Alaska law is. The Bush/Gore issue turned on Florida law, so it's not instructive here.

Tully Mars

11-11-2010 04:26 PM

Looks like the judge assigned to hear Millers case has withdrawn-

Quote:

Here's the story behind U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick's decision to have nothing to do with Joe Miller's efforts to block less-than-perfect votes cast for Lisa Murkowski.

Joe Miller's lawsuit to stop misspellings of Murkowski's name from counting as valid write-in votes was originally assigned to Sedwick, but Sedwick quickly removed himself from the case. It turns out Sedwick was the chief judge under whom Miller once worked as a part-time U.S. magistrate judge in Fairbanks, and Miller's sudden departure from the post to instead seek political office left Sedwick with a less than stellar opinion of the man. In fact, Sedwick openly admits he formed a "negative opinion of Mr. Miller," as explained in Sedwick's recusal of himself:

Plaintiff Joe Miller was once employed by this court as a part-time magistrate judge in Fairbanks. Subsequent to Mr. Miller's appointment to that position, I became chief judge of the district. As a result, I also became Mr. Miller's direct supervisor.

Mr. Miller's service came to an abrupt end when he called me to say that he planned to run for elective office and so would have to resign. Mr. Miller called at about 4:20 PM on the day of his resignation. The process for filling a part-time magistrate judge position is lengthy, a fact well known to Mr. Miller because he had gone through that process. Mr. Miller's failure to give reasonable notice of his resignation left the court with no judicial officer resident in Fairbanks, and no ability to fill the vacancy for many months. This incident caused me to form a negative opinion of Mr. Miller.

As a federal judicial officer, it is my duty to discourage political activity by my family members, and I do so. Nevertheless, members of my family have civil rights which they are entitled to exercise. Following the primary election, my spouse contributed to the write-in campaign of Senator Murkowski.

A reasonable person with knowledge of the above facts would conclude that my impartiality might reasonably be questioned. I recuse. The Clerk of Court will please re-assign this case to another judge.

Source

Rekna

11-12-2010 09:42 AM

What a judge actually recused himself? That never happens!

Tully Mars

11-12-2010 09:56 AM

Umm, yes it does.

StanT

11-12-2010 10:21 AM

I'm pretty indifferent, don't care for either candidate.

There is a pretty good court history that a voter's intent overrides any technicalities or administrative BS. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that. Alaska deserves 2 senators regardless of the outcome.

Tully Mars

11-13-2010 03:18 AM

Looks like the fat lady is warming up-

Quote:

JUNEAU, Alaska – The lawyers have started leaving.

That is perhaps the surest sign that Joe Miller’s chances of becoming the next senator from Alaska are evaporating. With each passing day that election workers here in the state capital manually count write-in votes cast for Senator Lisa Murkowski, it appears increasingly likely that Alaskans spell too well for Mr. Miller’s math to work.

Assisted by lawyers sent by the Republican National Senatorial Committee, the Miller campaign set out to challenge every smudge, stray mark and misspelling they could find (and, often, only they could find) on write-in votes that appeared to be for Ms. Murkowski.

Source

Tully Mars

11-19-2010 11:17 AM

Joe refuses to go down-

Quote:

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski declared herself the victor in the Alaska Senate race on Wednesday, but her Republican challenger Joe Miller took action on Thursday to stop her victory from becoming official.

An attorney for Miller on Thursday asked a federal judge for a preliminary injunction to keep state officials from certifying election results, according to reports.

Thursday's injunction modifies Miller's original lawsuit challenging how the state handled Murkowski's write-in campaign, in which Miller argued it was illegal for the state to accept write-in ballots with any kind of errors.

According to the state tally, Murkowski has a lead of about 10,400 votes. Even if the state threw out all of the write-in votes Miller's camp challenged, Murkowski would still lead by more than 2,000 votes.

However, the Miller campaign is now arguing in its injunction that the volunteers they recruited to observe the vote count did not have enough time to be properly trained because the write-in vote tally started ahead of schedule.

"My campaign team and I were forced to pull together volunteer observers at the last minute, and did not have time to adequately and fully recruit and train them before counting began," Miller wrote, the Associated Press reports. "As a result, an indeterminate number of ballots with candidates' names misspelled were counted without being challenged during the first several days of counting."

Murkowski's campaign manager Kevin Sweeney dismissed the argument, the Alaska Dispatch reports.

"Throughout this election, Miller has blamed everybody else," he said. "Now he is blaming his own volunteers -- people who took nearly a week of their own to travel to Juneau and work on his behalf,"

Miller is also now questioning whether the state sent ballots out to voters overseas and in the military in a timely manner, according to the Dispatch.

Source

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