An Alaska judge has expedited the schedule for Republican Joe Miller’s Alaska Senate race lawsuit, setting arguments for next Wednesday and asking that attorneys on both sides complete any filings as quickly as possible.
Despite Miller’s objections, Judge William Carey said: “We need to resolve this matter at this state court level just as soon as we can.”
Miller’s suit argues that the state acted unlawfully in counting misspelled ballots for write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski. He also alleges that Murkowski’s ballots were held to a different standard because they were counted by hand, while his were counted by machine.
Murkowski waged a write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary to Miller, and managed to come out ahead by over 10,000 votes in the general election. Two thousand of those votes went uncontested by the Miller campaign in the initial count.
Last week, Murkowski filed to intervene in Miller’s lawsuit against the state, which Miller has since contested because he says she has not shown that the state cannot “represent her interests adequately.” Murkowski also asked that the case be expedited because she could lose her seniority if she is not seated in the Senate by January 3. The judge will decide whether she can join the case later today.
Miller responded to the decision in a press release yesterday: “Regardless of whether Ms. Murkowski is permitted to intervene, we are confident that the court will enforce Alaska law as written, invalidate the State’s illegal initial count, and require that every ballot be hand-counted in accordance with state law.”
This follows another loss for Miller, who had been urging the state to hear the case in Fairbanks. Murkowski and the state argued that the case should be heard in Juneau, where the write-in ballots were counted, and yesterday Judge Douglas Blankenship agreed.
