Joe Miller Vows to Fight for Voters of Alaska

Murkowski “Lawyers Up” With High Priced Election Lawyers

Anchorage, Alaska. November 4, 2010 — Joe Miller is still cautiously optimistic about his chances for victory in the Alaska US Senate race. Meanwhile, Lisa Murkowski speaks as if she has already won the Alaska Senate race, but her declarations are premature. Murkowski proved her concern about the ultimate outcome of the election by her actions–she has parachuted in a phalanx of lawyers, including high profile election law attorney, Benjamin Ginsberg, as part of her legal team. Ginsberg played a key role in the “hanging chads” Florida recount of the 2000 election.

“While Senator Murkowski speaks of winning an historic write-in candidacy, she understands (as Joe Miller does), that this race is not over,” said Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto. He continued, “The difference between the “write-in votes” and Joe Miller votes is about 13,000; however there are approximately 31,200 absentee ballots that have gone out and over 26,000 have been returned to date, which are still to be counted. Absentees broke strongly for Joe during the primary election, particularly within the military community. We also still need to know how many of the write-in votes were properly cast for Lisa Murkowski.”

If past trends hold, a significant percentage of those 13,000 write-in votes will likely be disqualified and many others will be non-Murkowski votes. During the 1998 gubernatorial race, thousands of the write-in votes for Robin Taylor were disqualified. Miller is also assembling a legal team to oversee the ballot counting in an effort to maintain the integrity of the election process. The count will apparently occur in Juneau.

“We have two goals. To make sure the election is fair and that every valid vote is counted,” said DeSoto.

###