Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, who oversees Alaska elections, has indicated that he will accept minor misspellings of Murkowski's name as long as the "voter intent" is clear.Intent of the voter. Ah! That brings back delightful memories of the Bush v. Gore recount.
Miller is overdoing it. Clearly, they've got to count stuff like "Murakowski" and "Murkowsky" and "Murcowski" and even "Mercowsky." But where's the line? What about "Merssky"? Or "Murk."? What about "Lisa"? That's dimpled chad territory, no?
ADDED: A poll:
After the break, a second poll:
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221 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 221 of 221The list wouldn't have been 100 candidates long if the tea Party motivated by shock jocks hadn't in bad faith submitted most of those names in about the last 24 hours.
So what? It is what it is. It makes mispelled write-ins possible protest votes.
You really want to hold this up as an example good faith democracy in action?
Where did I do that?
There's a problem. No solution to it is ideal. The law offers a practical and reasonable solution. Other solutions are impractical and unreasonable.
Not everything is going to be simple and beautiful in this world.
Just to be clear, a vote for "Lisa" shouldn't qualify. There is another Lisa who qualified for the write-in ballot, one Lisa M. Lackey.
So how bad can handwriting get before one can clearly determine that a vote for Lisa Murkowsky is NOT a vote for Lisa M. Lackey? And vice versa?
If you've ever had to deal with a lot of handwritten documents, you know how tough that can be to judge.
You need to make sure that they weren't counted twice-once automatically by machine and then again if the voter also wrote in Joe Miller's name.
No, you don't. On the Alaska ballots, write-ins require that the "write-in" bubble be bubbled in. If they bubbled in the "Miller" bubble too, that would show up as 2 choices and that part of the ballot would be invalidated.
In short, the machine would already have rejected any ballot with that problem. The only ballots that go to a human being for reading are the ones with a single "write-in" bubble filled in.
Also Revenant as Mr. Libertarian Third Party do you really want to maintain these standards for third parties?
First of all, I'm a libertarian, not a member of the Libertarian Party. Kind of like how I can support democracy and the republic without belonging to the Democratic or Republican parties.
Secondly: yes. Absolutely. Ballots should be scored based on objective standards, not based on guessing voter intent. If you managed to fuck up your 2010 ballot then too bad, so sad, better luck in 2012. Our country faces a lot of challenges right now, but the self-disenfranchisement of clueless nitwits isn't one of them.
I"m going to leave this from the Miller campaign-
Third the new policy makes no
provision for the many voters who cast
protest votes. Prior to the election,
people commented on radio stations and
in the comment sections of blogs and
newspaper stories that they would
deliberately incorrectly write-in a
variation of "Murkowski" as a protest.
They did so knowing that Murkowski was
spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars on a "spelling bee" campaign,
replete with wrist bands, pencils and
tattoos, all to educate the voters on
proper spelling. Why was this done?
Because even Murkowski had read the
law and knew that it required proper
spelling--"No exceptions". So protest
voters were trying to send a message to
the candidate. The state has failed to
create any guideline or standard that
would account for the intent of the voter
who intentionally cast a protest vote. to
the contrary, the state is indicating that it
will now count a protest vote,
deliberately cast with a misspelling as a
vote for Murkowski.
This effectively nullifies the protest and
falsely inflates the vote for the write-in
candidate. In short, the state ha become
a super-voter and will override voter
intent and recast votes for the candidate
the state chooses. This is at core a
fraudulent abuse of the electoral process
and severely undermines our democratic
process. It makes a mockery of the
voting process -- allowing voter to
believe they cast a protest vote, but then
overriding that vote by state fiat.
*************************************
That's direct from the Miller filing.
That's the kind of argument or hill you all want to die on?
I don't know how in good conscience Freeman or Revenant you could take away the vote of someone who wrote in Lisa Murkoski.
I sure as hell wouldn't be able to do it and definitely not for the supposed people that took the above action that the Miller campaign is trying to defend. At the cost of voters that voted in good faith.
If you guys could sleep at night after disenfranchising people who voted Lisa Murkoski because you couldn't for the life of you figure out who they meant then wow...
Remember the limiting factor would be the list.....
That kind of limits your justifications for defrauding someone of their right to vote, and their vote.
You two would sleep like babies after doing that, no?
Sorry, I couldn't do it.
Former law student wrote:
Miller's name is on the ballot -- did he also run a write-in campaign?
well so what? Thats what the voters intent was. Just as people are too stupid to know how to spell Murkowsi's name, maybe some are too stupid to know that Miller didn't have a write in campaign.
Should't it be counted if it is written? Also, Joseph Miller, Joey Miller, Joe Milner and Joseph Campell, and just Joe should also count.
If the law is that proper spelling counts, then tha's what should be honored hear. No lawyers necessary. If you have an electoral college that determines the election then you don't get to say it should be the popular vote.
Maybe Alaska can change their law in the future, but in this case a vote for Lisa Morkowsi is a vote for Lisa morkowski and not Lisa Murkowski.
It's too bad that she has such bad spellers as supporters.
then tha's what should be honored hear= then that's what should be honored here. Geez.
I"m going to leave this from the Miller campaign-
Madawaskan, I don't care WHAT the Miller campaign is saying so I'm not going to bother reading it. The law says people who can't spell don't get their votes counted. I'm just criticizing those of you who are saying "waah the law's unfair and mean", but only selectively applying your outrage to the specific set of "unfairly" discarded ballots you want counted.
I mention the Miller write-ins strictly because under any honest system where intent is the guideline, they clearly should be counted. Yes, under the law they shouldn't be -- just like how, under the law, people who think "Lisa Morkussky" is running for Senate get to spent the next two years in remedial English classes.
madawaskan, where would you draw the line? Exactly how off can it be? What you are proposing seems ripe for abuse.
The law says people who can't spell don't get their votes counted
Was that the intent of the legislature? To turn every election into a spelling bee? Somehow I don't think so.
Requiring perfect spelling has a discriminatory effect, because women spell better than men. Should a woman's vote count more than a man's?
Joe Miller raises an interesting argument, mainly vis a vis the protest vote. If the law is the vote has to be spelled correctly, then a vote for Murkowski that is misspelled could be a vote for Murkowski or it could be a protest vote. Why should Murkowski get the protest votes?
I'm not really sure what the law actually is, but if it does say the spelling has to be correct, then isn't it incumbent on those writing in their candidate to have that information correct? It's not that hard, put the name on a sticky note and copy the name to a piece of paper.
If the law needs to be changed to accomodate poor spellers, then it should be addressed by the legislature after the election. (that is, assuming that that is one of the components of the law)
Madawaskan wrote:
That's direct from the Miller filing.
That's the kind of argument or hill you all want to die on?
I don't know how in good conscience Freeman or Revenant you could take away the vote of someone who wrote in Lisa Murkoski.
I sure as hell wouldn't be able to do it and definitely not for the supposed people that took the above action that the Miller campaign is trying to defend. At the cost of voters that voted in good faith.
If you guys could sleep at night after disenfranchising people who voted Lisa Murkoski because you couldn't for the life of you figure out who they meant then wow...
But what is the law? Why did Murkowski go through all the trouble to inform her voters the proper spelling of her name. She had to know that the law said that the spelling had to be correct, otherwise she probably wouldnt' have bothered.
But aren't voters responsible for complying with the law? And if people are saying to write in bad spellings of her name as protest vote how are we determining what their intent actually is.
IN this case the intent is not as important as the law, because we don't necessarily know the intent, but we do know the law (actually I don't, but am assuming that if people are suggesting that that is in fact the law, that people would have corrected them if they were wrong).
Was that the intent of the legislature? To turn every election into a spelling bee? Somehow I don't think so.
Which spelling bee is it that hands the contestants a printed copy of the words they'll be asked to spell?
It was the intent of the legislature that the candidate's name be spelled correctly. They provide a list of names for exactly that reason.
Wait. They gave them a piece of paper at the polls that had her name on it to copy from?
If you managed to fuck up your 2010 ballot then too bad, so sad, better luck in 2012. Our country faces a lot of challenges right now, but the self-disenfranchisement of clueless nitwits isn't one of them.
Tsk, tsk. And people call Obama elitist.
There's no IQ test required for voting. No spelling test, which should come as a relief to GOPsters who supported Dan Quayle. The latest news out of Alaska is that Miller wants to disqualify sloppy penmanship -- o's that don't look like the Palmer Method. What the point is of criticizing penmanship in the third decade of the PC age I don't know.
It's 2010, if you can't spell the name of a write-in candidate corectly, your vote should not count.
Especially since Murkowski (or whatever) spent a lot of money making sure people know how to spell her name before they went into the booth.
Wait. They gave them a piece of paper at the polls that had her name on it to copy from?
Sad, isn't it?
Tsk, tsk. And people call Obama elitist.
There are much better reasons for calling me "elitist" than the fact that I think people who cannot copy nine letters from one piece of paper to another are idiots.
There's no IQ test required for voting. No spelling test, which should come as a relief to GOPsters who supported Dan Quayle.
The law requires accurate spelling, so the accurately-spelled name is given to the voter. If you want to call copying a word from one paper to another a "spelling test", you go right on ahead and do it. :)
MOST STATES ALLOW WRITE-IN VOTES FOR PRESIDENT. We need to cajole voters in these states to write in RON PAUL as PRESIDENT.
OTHERWISE WE'LL BE LIVING IN SOVIET AMERICA.
These are the communistic states that don't allow write-in voting: Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota.
http://www.anamericanvision.com/info/state_certifications.php
DEAN BERRY MINISTRIES: "When a government outlaws 'terrorism', it's planning something for which 'terrorism' is the only recourse. Obviously."
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