Murkowski has a lead of about 10,400 votes. Miller had challenged 8,153 of the ballots counted for Murkowski, but he would still be behind even if he won every challenge.
However, Miller, in an affidavit Thursday, said the Division of Elections began its hand count of write-in ballots a week earlier than scheduled.
"Consequently, my campaign team and I were forced to pull together volunteer observers at the last minute, and did not have time to adequately and fully recruit and train them before counting began," he said. "As a result, an indeterminate number of ballots with candidates' names misspelled were counted without being challenged during the first several days of counting."
Miller said he intends to request a recount.
Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein also said the state's policy is a departure from past practices of rejecting such write-in votes.
Van Flein filed an affidavit from former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, who served under Murkowski's father, former Gov. Frank Murkowski. Leman said he would not have accepted misspelled names on write-in ballots."If an election had been held during my tenure as lieutenant governor in which write-in votes had to be counted, I would have directed the division director to follow a strict interpretation of election law, and let a court direct otherwise if a candidate and the court disagreed with the division's analysis," he said.
Miller's campaign filed the lawsuit last week as hand counting of write-in ballots began.
And Joe Miller will continue to sue for recount after recount claiming "his team wasn't ready to challenge all the votes" until he wins. If Republicans don't like the facts of the matter, then the facts must be wrong. You thought Al Franken-Norm Coleman was a colossal waste of time?
This one's just beginning. Murkowski will not be seated for a long, long time.
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I'm not so sure Miller succeeds in dragging this out. The powers that be in Alaska seem to wish he would just go away too. (I'm sure they'd be singing a different tune if it were McAdams vs Miller.)
Did you see the pathetic, lame-ass "myths" about the recount on Miller's campaign page? If I recall correctly, the first one was that the whole thing is unfair because Murkowski should have quit after she lost the primary anyway. It went downhill from there.
One thing the Miller debacle proves beyond a doubt -- Palin does not vet her picks. Sure, she endorsed wackaloons like Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell too, but she didn't go out and recruit them. Miller is all Palin's doing, and what a colossal bust.
I don't think they'll have much of a choice, Betty. If Joe Miller concedes now, he's a Sarah Palin quitter who's not Sarah Palin, and he's doubly screwed then.
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