Alaska Republican Joe Miller filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday over the planned count of write-in ballots in the Senate race. The suit asks that the judge stop the state from counting ballots that misspell write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s name.
According to the complaint, Miller wants to prevent election officials from “counting or otherwise accepting as valid any write-in ballots in which the name of the candidate is spelt incorrectly, or on which the name of the candidate is not written as it appears on a write-in declaration of candidacy.”
Counting of the write-in ballots is scheduled to begin today, and will not be immediately effected by the lawsuit. The state already began counting absentee ballots yesterday, which saw Miller make gains of about 2,100 votes on the total number of write-in ballots, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Miller requests an injunction in the suit, and asks for a hearing to be held today.
