Joe Miller is no Al Gore

The Tea Party- endorsed Joe Miller shocked everyone in Alaska when he defeated Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary race for U.S. Senate. Then Murkowski stunned observers by deciding to run for Senate as a write-in candidate, offering an alternative to the Republican and Democratic choices on the ballot. This whole drama became even more interesting when Miller finished second in the voting to the write-in total. Despite Sarah Palin's support, Miller had lost to Murkowski. Yet Miller and his lawyers clung to one shred of hope. Murkowski is a lot harder to spell than Miller! Without a doubt, some of the hardy Alaskans writing in her name might spell it Murcowski, or even Murkowsky. Miller and his lawyers would insist on throwing out all misspelled write-in ballots. Why? Well, while a rational vote counter might want to count a vote for Murkowsky as a vote for Murkowski, this procedure

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 in 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 has become a super-voter and will override voter intent and recast the 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 voters to believe they cast a protest vote, but then overriding that vote by state fiat.

Miller and his lawyers seem to inhabit some strange parallel universe. There were indeed Alaskan voters who protested against Murkowski's candidacy. They voted for Miller, or even the Democrat Scott McAdams. There may have been a handful of protesters who wrote in "Mickey Mouse," or "Al Capone." What certainly did not happen was any sort of movement to "send a message through misspelling." Not even Joe Miller's supporters are that moronic. Still, our nation remains entertained by the continued adventures of this bizarre man.