Friday, November 19, 2010

Sore Loser Joe Miller Refuses To Give Up


The votes have been counted and it appears as if Lisa Murkowski has made history by becoming the second person ever to win an election as a write-in candidate - the first was Strom Thurmond in 1954.  Ron Hogan wrote the following for Popfi:
It’s taken a week of hand-counting and lots of legal squabbling from both sides, but it looks as if Lisa Murkowski is going to become the first write-in candidate elected to the United States Senate in 50 years. The write-in ballots were outnumbering those cast for the major party candidates, but nobody could say for sure that Murkowski was winning until they were all counted. Well, the votes have been counted, and Lisa Murkowski is Alaska’s new Senator.

There are still some 8153 disputed ballots, but they don’t matter. Murkowski is roughly 10000 votes ahead of Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, and the 700 or so uncounted ballots won’t make a difference in the race. Murkowski is officially one of two Senate representatives to Alaska.
Now you would think Joe Miller would make good on his promise and concede, being that he had stated in the past that if the math did not add up, he would forfeit the race to Murkowski, right? Well, it looks as if Miller lied.

Eve though Lisa Murkowski has more then enough votes to win, even after taking into consideration the ballots challenged by Miller, Miller believes that it is not impossible for him to win - his new argument claims ballot counting started a week early forcing him to cobble a bunch of untrained observers to monitor the elections, therefor missing some ballots he could have contested.

"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."
 
Once Miller finds his theoretical contestable ballots, he would then file a lawsuit in the courts to try and have all contested ballots thrown out.  I guess that if Miller's team were properly trained they would not have challenged ballots that spelled the candidates name correctly or listed her last name first, but then again, maybe Miller is hoping his ragtag bunch of volunteers can disenfranchise even more voters who know how to spell.

Miller's refusal to lose is interesting considering the GOP, which has backed Miller throughout the entire campaign, is now supporting the election results, calling on Miller to step aside.  The Republican party knows Miller is dead in the water and Murkowski has already stated that she will caucus with the Republicans so they are just trying to secure all of Murkowski's future votes - if they supported their candidate, they may turn off Murkowski when she returns to Washington, making her more willing to buck leadership.

I am interested to see how this unfolds, because like his mentor Sarah Palin, who was another sore loser, I do not think Miller plans on staying out of the limelight.

4 comments:

  1. Seriously, what do you expect? For decades, every time the wingnuts lose an election, Rusty the Chickenhawk, Sean Fannity and Glenn the Idiot claim their candidate lost because they were not conservative enough. As a result, these wingnuts and their loser candidates can not accept the fact that they have been rejected by the American people.

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  2. I found Miller's complaints to be pretty funny - he claimed he would drop his candidacy if the math didn't add up, but when the math doesn't add up using Miller's math, he wants to take it to the courts - the federal courts!

    I'm hoping for some further humiliation of Miller!

    I viewed Murkowski as a somewhat moderate candidate (maybe moderate by Alaska's standards), and I hope that this whole ordeal - with the GOP's flirtation's with Miller - that Murkowski moves closer to the center...

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  3. No way Miller would hire a trial lawyer, right? Conservatives HATE trial lawyers and frivolous lawsuits!

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  4. I didn't even think about that! I thought it was funny that he went crying to the federal government for a state problem, but you are absolutely right - even before the count was done Miller had his lawyers circling the election results...

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