JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Republican Joe Miller and lifted a stay on certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate election, clearing the way for Sen. Lisa Murkowski to officially be declared the winner later this week. The rulings by U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline mean Alaska state officials will likely certify the November election results either Wednesday or Thursday. That would allow Murkowski to be sworn in when the new term of Congress convenes next week, and make her the first U.S. Senate candidate since 1954 to win with a write-in campaign. “This is the best possible outcome for us,” her campaign manager, Kevin Sweeney, said Tuesday. Miller, a tea party favorite who defeated Murkowski in Alaska’s GOP primary only to be confronted with her more-energetic November write-in campaign, could still appeal. He has said he’s willing to go to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary — with one of his main goals being ensuring there’s an accurate, fair vote tally. But he also has said he is taking his legal steps one at a time. His spokesman, Randy DeSoto, said Beistline’s decision was being reviewed. Beistline had been expected to lift his stay on certifying the election this week, but his decision to toss out Miller’s claims — a day after Miller filed them — was more surprising. Miller initially sued in federal court but Beistline determined the state courts were in a better position, at least initially, to decide who had won. Beistline barred the state from certifying results until Miller’s claims had been addressed, and he allowed Miller to argue any outstanding federal issues before him after the state Supreme Court ruling. Last week, the high court refused to overturn results favoring Murkowski and said it found no remaining issues raised by Miller that should prevent the race from being certified. In federal court filings Monday, Miller argued that state officials had violated provisions of the U.S. Constitution in their handling of the election and write-in ballots for Murkowski. But Beistline said Tuesday that claims made by Miller either didn’t rise to constitutional violations or didn’t merit him second-guessing the high court’s determinations. He said that generally speaking, the state Supreme Court “is the final expositor of Alaska law. That must be the case here.” Unofficial results showed Murkowski ahead by 10,328 votes, or 2,169 when ballots challenged by Miller’s camp were excluded. Miller wanted the state held to a strict reading of the law, which calls for write-in ballots to have the ovals filled and either the candidate’s last name or name as it appears on the declaration of candidacy written. Ballots with misspellings, extra words or letters, even stray marks, his team argued, should not count. Miller sought to have the results of the election invalidated and to get a recount. The state, pointing to case law, used discretion in determining voter intent and allowed for ballots with misspellings to be counted toward Murkowski’s tally. The high court determined voter intent is “paramount.” Beistline said Miller’s technical arguments shouldn’t be read as “frivolous, for it’s easy to understand his view” on the reading of the law. But he said it’s just as easy to accept the state Supreme Court’s reading. “What we have before us is a poorly drafted state statute,” he wrote. Beistline also said he could not find the methods used by the state in counting write-in ballots to be “unreasonable.” “The very nature of a ‘write-in’ vote pre-supposes a requirement that someone will have to read the handwriting and determine for whom the vote was cast,” he wrote.
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Judge Lifts Stay on AK Election Results, Clears Way for Murkowski Senate Win
The Alaska Supreme Court denied Senate candidate Joe Miller’s claims that the state conducted the midterm election improperly, effectively affirming Lisa Murkowski’s 10,328-vote lead.
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Miller Loses in Alaska Court
Lisa Murkowski won the fight to keep her Senate seat, suggesting an end to an unusual battle that pitted the Republican incumbent against tea-party-backed newcomer Joe Miller.
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Murkowski Wins Alaska Senate Seat
**Written by Doug Powers A federal contractor speaks at an air base and essentially tells workers that, if they want to keep their jobs, they’ll vote for primary-loser-who-refused-to-go-away Lisa Murkowski, because she’s on the appropriations subcommittee that steers a lot of money to Alaska — a subcommittee the other candidates won’t be able to get on. Video from The Blaze by way of HAP : Ah the perks of incumbency and continued access to our money. Speaking of the federal contractor urging people to spell Murkowski’s name correctly on the ballot, there’s always hope for next week’s manual recount that most Murkowski write-in voters learned to spell her name from the url on Murkowski’s first web ad, which, ironically enough, was about teaching people how to spell her name : **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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We Get What We’re Forced to Pay For: Federal Contractor Tells Workers to Vote for Murkowski
The winner of Alaska’s Senate race might not be known for weeks, as election officials wrestle with complications created by incumbent Lisa Murkowski’s write-in effort as well as thousands of absentee ballots.
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Murkowski Has Slim Lead in Alaska
Sen. Lisa Murkowski suddenly has some new competition for the write-in segment of Alaska’s ballot, as more than 100 people signed up as write-in candidates just before the deadline.
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In Twist, Write-Ins Multiply in Alaska
That’s the headline at WaPo : The tea party’s volatile influence on this election year appears to be doing more harm than good for Republicans’ chances in some of the closest races in the nation, in which little-known candidates who upset the establishment with primary wins are now stumbling in the campaign’s final days. In Kentucky, a volunteer for tea-party-backed Senate candidate Rand Paul was videotaped stepping on the head of a liberal protester. In Delaware and Colorado, Senate hopefuls Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck, respectively, are under fire for denying that the First Amendment’s establishment clause dictates a separation of church and state. In Nevada, GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle is drawing rebuke for running TV ads that portray Latino immigrants as criminals and gang members. Perhaps the most dramatic tea party problems are in Alaska, where Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller is suffering another round of unfavorable headlines after it was revealed late Tuesday that he had admitted lying about his misconduct while working as a government lawyer in Fairbanks. Miller was conducting his own poll in 2008 in an effort to oust a state GOP chairman, and he used his colleagues’ computers to vote in the survey, then erased their computers’ caches to try to hide what he had done. “I was beyond stupid,” he wrote in a letter of apology included in documents ordered released by a judge Tuesday. He was suspended for three days without pay, according to the documents. Miller, who was considered a shoo-in just two months ago when he defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary, was already falling quickly in GOP and Democratic internal polls before Tuesday’s revelations, strategists said. Last week, he was in the spotlight when a campaign-paid security guard handcuffed a reporter who tried to ask Miller a question. Such moments are giving Democrats hope that the few undecided voters who remain may become turned off and move away from Republicans in the closer races nationwide, including those in Colorado, Nevada and Kentucky. “In state after state, Republicans nominated a less viable general-election candidate, and that’s more on display than ever in these final days of the campaign,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Miller’s latest travails are more likely to give the advantage to Murkowski, who began a write-in campaign shortly after her primary loss, than to Democrat Scott McAdams, the little-known mayor of Sitka. But even in Republican-leaning Alaska, no one is counting out McAdams: Both Murkowski and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is backing Miller, are running ads targeting the Democrat. The Miller campaign did not respond to inquiries Wednesday. But the Murkowski team jumped on the latest disclosure. “The bottom line is Joe cheated, he lied, tried to cover it up, lied again, then finally got caught and had to admit it, just as he lied to Alaskans when he initially denied any problems with his employment at the [Fairbanks North Star] Borough, claiming his record was ‘exceptional’ and ‘second to none.’ ” Miller’s most ardent supporters say they are unfazed. Asked whether her group plans to pull its support for Miller, Amy Kremer, head of the national Tea Party Express group, said via e-mail: “Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, we are going back up on the air for Joe Miller because he is the only candidate addressing the important economic issues facing America while Lisa Murkowski is following the Democrat game plan around the country of only making vicious attacks on her opponent.” In addition, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will appear with Miller on Thursday at a rally in Anchorage. I haven’t been following the Alaska race much at all (so check Dan Riehl ), although clearly WaPo sees these dramatic “tea party” incidents as a chance to slam the grassroots right. The media’s demonization of Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell is pretty much played out; Sharron Angle long ago proved that’s she’s the real deal in Nevada; and the Rand Paul headstomping story in Kentucky isn’t even about Rand Paul. For the MFM, these stories — now with stuff like Joe Miller’s missteps in Alaska — are opening up an alternative media line as we move into the last week of the campaign. And of course things are looking simply disastrous for the Democrats. (California Senator Dianne Feinstein went off message yesterday , suggesting things are just plain old “bad” for the party.) I’m not holding my breath for any big breakthroughs in the Senate anyway. I won’t be surprised with 7 or 8 seats, but it’s an extreme longshot for taking all ten needed to restore GOP control. Maybe James Carville’s weird kinda hunch that voters will just sweep everyone out will come true. Mostly though, it’s going to be sweet to win back the House. Democrats will be on defense for the next two years, and only a strong economy will save them from losing the White House in 2012. VIDEO HAT TIP : The Other McCain .
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Tea Party Antics Could End Up Burning Republicans
In Alaska, where Sen. Lisa Murkowski is mounting a write-in campaign to hold on to her seat, officials and candidates are gearing up for legal wrangling over which misspellings of her name should be counted in her favor.
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Bracing for a Fight on Write-in Ballots
During her unsuccessful primary election battle for the Republican nomination, Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski received an endorsement from former Sen. Ted Stevens just days before the Senator passed away. Murkowski went on to lose that battle to tea party favorite Joe Miller, but that hasn’t slowed down her re-election campaign as she now fights to maintain her seat as an Independent, and polls show the two candidates in a tight race. But with the primary election in the past, Sen. Murkowski has pulled out the old message from the late Sen. Stevens, claiming it as an endorsement for her current candidacy. Would Stevens have supported Murkowski’s Independent bid for re-election, or would he have supported the GOP nominee, Joe Miller? No one can say for sure, but this controversy isn’t stopping Murkowski and the Stevens family from using the late senator’s name to support her: What do you think — is it appropriate for Murkowski to use the primary election ad for her general election campaign?
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Murkowski Camp Claims Endorsement of Late AK Sen. Ted Stevens
