Miller Loses Bid to Move Trial
Politico reports:
An Alaska state judge ruled Monday that Republican Joe Miller's court case contesting the Senate race results will be held in Juneau.
The next hearing for the case over the race between Miller and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who currently leads the field with write-in votes, will be Wednesday.
Miller defeated Murkowski in the GOP primary in August, but the senator mounted a spirited write-in campaign to fend off Miller and retain her seat in the general election. After all of the ballots were counted last week, Murkowski held a 10,300-vote lead over Miller — including about 8,159 votes that have been challenged by Miller campaign but counted for the senator anyway.
The fate of those thousands of ballots will now be determined in a courtroom in Juneau. Miller's lawsuit argues that voters must spell Murkowski's name perfectly in order for their votes to count. Election officials have said they will use the lower standard of voter intent.
Miller's campaign, which wanted the trial to be held near his home in Fairbanks, downplayed the minor loss of its preferred location choice. Instead, Miler noted in a press release that he agreed with the state's contention that security was too big of a concern to move the ballots from Juneau to Fairbanks for the trial.
"We all paused when the state attorney general admitted to having security concerns about the ballots. We simply assumed the same security measures used to transport the ballots from Fairbanks (and from throughout the state of Alaska) to Juneau after they were cast would be used to transfer ballots from Juneau to Fairbanks, if that were necessary," said Miller.
Murkowski's campaign was pleased with Judge Doug Blankenship's decision to hold the trial in Juneau. Her campaign has maintained that the trial should remain in the state's capital.
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