Court Orders State to Respond to Injunction Request

Anchorage, Alaska. November 10, 2010 — Today, in response to the Miller campaign’s motion for an injunction to compel the state to follow state law in balloting counting, the District Court judge ordered the State to file a response to the motion by November 15, 2010, and for the Miller campaign to file any reply by November 18. A hearing may be held after that.
 
The court reasoned that as long as the state of Alaska was segregating the challenged ballots, the legal issue regarding the validity of these ballots could be determined after the initial count was completed. Joe Miller said, “I am pleased the court will look at the issues we have raised. I would have liked the legal issues to have been resolved before there is a preliminary count, since the state cannot certify a winner until the court rules on the validity of the ballot counting process. So this will necessarily extend the actual final vote count until after November 18, as the vote count until then will be provisional.”
 
Counsel for the Miller Campaign, Thomas Van Flein, added that “The point of this is to make sure the rules, and the law, are followed, so that the winner of this election will be elected fairly and, in the eyes of the public, legitimately.” Attorney John Tiemessen, who has been monitoring the ballot count in Juneau, added “Watching the application of the newly invented “voter intent” standard has been troubling. We have seen first hand ballots ‘put on hold’ because the state employee could not figure out voter intent, but thought if they looked at the same ballot tomorrow or the next day, the ballot might be easier to understand. This is precisely the problem with having a state bureaucrat guess what a voter supposedly meant. In reality, the state bureaucrat is casting that vote. It is an issue the court needs to address.”
 

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