Monday 15 November 2010

Alaska Senate election and misspelling

Prof. Richard Hasen of Loyola Law School Los Angeles has an interesting article in Slate in which he analyzes the Alaska Senate election lawsuit filed by Republican Joe Miller.  Mr. Miller is trailing write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski by more than 10,000 votes. The lawsuit is based on the fact that not everyone who wrote in for Ms. Murkowski spelled her name right, and Miller has sued to block the rules being used to count the misspelled ballots.  Alaska election officials have adopted the looser standard of "voter intent" to allow for misspellings. The complaint filed by Mr. Miller is available online (14 page pdf).

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