As largely expected, the Alaska Supreme Court has rejected GOP U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s contest against the Division of Elections, which has unofficially determined write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski bested both Miller and Democratic candidate Scott McAdams on November 2nd.
Via Sean Cockerham at Anchorage Daily News…
“There are no remaining issues raised by Miller that prevent this election from being certified,†the Supreme Court declared in its unanimous ruling.
Murkowski leads Miller by more than 10,000 votes. Miller is quickly running out of options but he still has a chance to press his claim in federal court.
U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline today gave Miller until Monday morning to argue the federal courts should take up any remaining constitutional issues.
…
Miller has indicated he might fight the election all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But his spokesman said today that Miller is weighing his next move.
See Cockerham’s ADN article for more details on the high court’s findings.
Here’s Miller’s original state complaint [PDF], his appeal to the AK Supreme Court [PDF] and the AK Supremes’ 24-page ruling [PDF] on it (which we haven’t gotten to read in full yet, so we may update based on our review.)
And here’s our detailed report from yesterday, describing the general issues at stake, and offering what seems to have been a pretty accurate preview of what the court appears to have decided today. The decision once again leaving thousands of paper ballots completely unexamined by human eyes, tallied only by oft-failed, easily-manipulated computer systems, just as NY’s highest court did earlier this week in a race that was far closer than the Miller/Murkowski/McAdams race.
The fight to see paper ballots actually be counted — as per Democracy’s Gold Standard — continues.
“The decision once again leaving thousands of paper ballots completely unexamined by human eyes…..”
I am not sure why anyone expected a manual recount in this case, neither candidate asked for a one.
Footnote 50: “Like Miller’s claim regarding the class of votes by allegedly unidentified voters, this claim is in the nature of an election recount appeal. Like Miller, Murkowski did not request a recount. We therefore consider this claim only as one for declaratory judgment with respect to the interpretation of AS 15.15.360’s provisions regarding marking the ovals on ballots.”
Further, since Miller didn’t file for a recount, what is he wanting? Even if the court sides with him, he still loses the election by more 2000 votes.
I don’t think anyone thinks Miller has a chance to effect the outcome of the election. However, DeMint and his scaly minions would like to hold up certification long enough to prevent giving Murkowski any assignments befitting her senority.
Miller doesn’t have the money to continue this circus but DeMint(ed) does.
Mark da Shark –
See “COUNT TWO” of Miller’s initial complaint to the state court [PDF] where he details his belief that counting ballots one way (by hand, in the case of write-in) versus by optical-scan in all other cases is in violation of the AK election code provision requiring the Div. of Elections “facilitate fairness” in the vote counting.
In the “Prayer for Relief section, he then seeks:
…
1. …
b. Conclusively rejecting as invalid, and declining to count, ballots that were rejected by an automatic tally (optical scanning) machine, in which the voter did not write in the name of a candidate, without first conducting an individualized review and hand count of them according to the same standards Defends applied to such ballots containing write-in candidates, in violation of AS 15.15.030(5) and (12)
It is on this basis, likely, if Miller decided to go to federal court, that he’d be able to make an equal justice argument (akin to the one made in Bush v. Gore that ballots were being counted by different standards — that, even as ballots are always counted under different standards, for example, absentee ballots are generally tallied by different devices than ballots cast at precincts, and even at precincts, ballots may be tabulated by op-scan *or* disabled-asistive DRE devices, etc.)
So he is not filing for a “recount”, to my knowledge, but rather hoping to have a count done equally in the first place.
As to this:
…I’ve spoken to that previously several times, most recently on Tuesday night here. If the court sides with him on the spelling issue, then yes, he’d still be behind by some 2000 votes. But that is not necessarily the case if all votes are actually counted by hand. Nobody knows what the result might be in that case, and I’d argue that Miller (and his supporters…and the rest of us) have a right to know what those results actually are.
Hope that answers your questions. (And please spare me your relitigation of my description of one of the elements in Bush v. Gore noted above, btw. I mention it by way of helping to clarify your question, not in the interest of requesting another one of your long legal treatises on your interpretation of the case.)