Republican senate candidate Joe Miller will appeal Friday’s court ruling, which said that it was acceptable for Alaska to count misspelled write-in votes as votes for Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The Miller campaign press release:
Today, the Joe Miller for U.S. Senate Campaign filed its Notice of Appeal with the Alaska Supreme Court. The Court has issued an expedited briefing schedule, whereby Mr. Miller’s opening brief is due tomorrow, and the State’s opposition brief will be due on Wednesday. Oral argument on the appeal is scheduled for Friday December 17, 2010. Mr. Miller is appealing portions of Judge Carey’s ruling, including the ruling that essentially modifies state law that previously required write-in ballots to match the candidate’s declaration form, but now, after Judge Carey’s ruling, such ballots will be counted as long as an unelected bureaucrat believes he or she can determine or guess what a voter intended.
Said Mr. Miller, “We have consistently asserted that the law should be followed strictly. The fact that the legislature stated that there should be “no exceptions” to the ballot counting method is what, in our view, should govern this matter. Under the current ruling, there are now over 8,000 exceptions, a result everyone who favors the rule of law should question.”
Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto added, “In order to get a fair and accurate count we need a hand review and count of Joe’s ballots. Lisa Murkowski’s were reviewed and counted in this fashion, but Miller ballots not tallied by the voting machines–due to the ballot not being filled out properly–are not included in his count. With over 255,000 ballots cast (and a less than 1% difference separating Miller and Murkowski in the unchallenged count), this number could be significant. Additionally, we have sworn statements of machines in various precincts not functioning properly. Equal protection under the law requires that Miller’s ballots be counted in the same fashion as Murkowski’s, by hand.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) told Roll Call last week that he hoped “it doesn’t go on much longer because I think the people of Alaska deserve to have a Senator when we reconvene again in January, and not still have that up in the air.”