A Look At Challenged Alaska Ballots

Yesterday about twenty percent of the write-in ballots were counted. 98 percent were for Murkowski and 89% of those weren't challenged by Miller's poll watchers. DrewM did the math and at that rate Murkowski would win by about 1000 votes without even having to count the challenged ballots. In other words, the exact-spelling rule dispute will be moot if the the 89% rate persists.

Miller must have done the math too because he's challenging a lot more ballots today, including these:

According to Miller's poll watchers, the three voters who filled out those ballots should be disfranchised. By challenging ballots like these, which are clearly Murkowski votes and don't appear misspelled to me, Miller is ensuring that the pile of challenged ballots will have to be considered to determine the outcome of the election.

Update: This was sent to me by Jim Wilke via twitter and it gets right to the problem. This ballot has two flaws that I can see.

First, and most importantly, the voter didn't fill in the bubble next to the blank line before writing in Murkowski's name. Second, it looks like she (it's a she, right?) wrote "Murkoski", omitting the "w".

There are a bunch more in this yfrog feed, including a ballot like the one I suggested would be a problem: a vote for "Lisa Murkowsky."

And here's one, I shit you not, for "Lisa Murcoski (sorry if I misspelled)."

posted by Gabriel Malor at 04:37 PM

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