Shenanigans are afoot in Alaska. After last week’s ruling that a list of write-in candidates could be provided to Alaska voters to help them figure out how not to vote for Joe Miller, the Miller-Palinites added over 150 new candidates to the race in the hopes of diluting any votes that would go to Murkowski:
As votes were counted in America’s tumultuous midterm last night, nowhere was there more scope for chaos in the complex counting process than in Alaska, where election supervisors were warning that declaring a winner in the US Senate race may not take a few hours, but perhaps days or even longer.
The problem is the Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski and her exotic name. After losing the Republican primary contest to the Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, she decided to keep running as a “write-in”: her name did not appear on ballots last night but voters were free to write it down anyway.
Officials said that the law gives them 15 days to certify a winner. The last polls suggested that Mr Miller, Ms Murkowski and the Democrat candidate, Scott McAdams, were in a dead heat.
But there is worse: after the courts in Alaska ruled last week that election workers could hand voters a list showing the names of write-in candidates as they enter the voting booths, Miller supporters rushed to register themselves as last-minute runners just to dilute whatever advantage the lists might give to Ms Murkowski. Suddenly there were well over 150 write-in candidates in the race.
Derp.
