Murkowski Wants Voice in Election Court Fight
The Alaska Dispatch reports:
Lisa Murkowski wants in on the ballot count fight that's now in state court in Fairbanks. With the case, filed Monday by unrelenting rival Joe Miller, now in play, Miller has effectively delayed certification of the election -- previously scheduled for Nov. 29 -- until after the state court resolves the questions of fairness and lawful procedure that Miller has raised.
Murkowski has a clear vested interest in closely monitoring legal back-and-forth that is likely to take place between Miller's lawyers and lawyers for the Division of Elections, against which the case is filed. Miller wants to close the vote gap that now separates him and Murkowski, and for obvious reasons Murkowski has no interest in seeing that happen. Plus, she wants the case dealt with swiftly to ensure a smooth swearing-in, scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., in early January.
Both sides say they're also fighting on behalf of Alaska voters. For Miller, that means making sure imperfect votes (those with misspellings) don't cancel out perfectly cast votes. In the case of this particular election, that also means making sure people who voted for Miller have a better chance of not being outnumbered by people who voted for Murkowski. Murkowski's goal is just the opposite -- to ensure as many votes as possible are tallied and considered legitimate as long as "voter intent" can be determined.
"By intervening in the case, Sen. Murkowski seeks to protect the thousands of voters that Mr. Miller seeks to disenfranchise," said Murkowski campaign manager Kevin Sweeney in a prepared statement.
Sweeney, who calls Miller's case "baseless," also thinks there's a chance that Murkowski's lead could increase as a result of the court review, as her attorneys plan to argue that write-in votes on which the oval was not filled in, but on which Murkowski's name was written, should also count.
"He could be spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees in order to lose by an even larger margin," Sweeney said in an interview Wednesday.
The Murkowski campaign also believes Fairbanks is a poor choice of venue and thinks that Juneau, where the ballots were analyzed and where many witnesses are located, is a better place to hear the case. Miller has declined to respond to requests made by Alaska Dispatch seeking clarification of why he chose to file the case in Fairbanks. If the state doesn't try to move the case out of Fairbanks, Murkowski will, Sweeney said. (On Wednesday afternoon, after our interview with Sweeney, the state did file for a change of venue.)
But before that can happen, a judge must allow Murkowski to join the case as an interested or affected party. Wednesday, she filed the necessary paperwork, but a judge must still weigh in.
Miller's post-election legal challenges aren't winning him any favors within the Alaska Republican Party, which supported him as the people's choice coming out of the August primary. "I am troubled by the unfounded concerns and inaccurate claims expressed by the Joe Miller campaign organization, its supporters and associated individuals," said Randy Ruedrich, the party's chair, in a written statement in which he debunks five of the Miller campaign's claims of election-related malfeasance stemming from the ballot count, including one he paints as a bogus "conspiracy theory."
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