Saturday evening, Brad Friedman, one of the country's leading experts on voting rights and voting fraud, wrote:Earlier this week AP called the election in favor of incumbent Republican write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski. But, as we described, there are a number of reasons --- including Alaska's recent history of impossible election results as reported by their flawed, oft-failed, easily-manipulated and non-transparent Diebold optical-scan system --- which suggest that Miller would be performing a service to the voters of Alaska and the rest of the country if he used his standing to insist on a full, public hand-count.
By the way, Democratic candidate Scott McAdams would be performing a similar service if he used his standing to join Miller in that pursuit...
Late in the week, Friedman wrote the most detailed look yet at Alaska's recent history in regard to being able to fully show our state has a transparent voting process, particularly in regard to attention to the records involving numbers that come into the central vote tabulation systems from the precincts and their Accu-vote machines. The state has shown bad faith to Alaska's voters by neglecting to even act on the University of Alaska's audit recommendations of 2008. Those wan recommendations were the result of a compromise between the state division of elections and the Democratic Party of Alaska. Even during the course of this extended vote count, a spokesperson from the division told Friedman that compliance with the UAA recommendations wasn't and isn't a high priority.
Shannyn Moore has written about this too, also interviewing Brad on her KUDO radio show. Jeanne Devon at The Mudflats has written persuasively about the need to audit this vote fully. I've chimed in. So have other liberals and progressives.
Most peoples' eyes glaze over when I try to explain the importance of fully resolving the complaint of the Democratic Party, stemming from the Knowles-Murkowski senatorial race in 2004. Trying to tie its history to Miller's current complaint isn't music to the ears of Alaskans tired of Joe.
Asking Scott McAdams or other candidates from this long cycle to support Miller's quest may be a hard sell. Friedman is certainly right that the first person to ask may be Scott McAdams.
Anyone willing to help?
7 comments:
Scott McAdams could throw considerable weight on this. But isn't it up to us the electorate to write and MAKE our officials fix the system that is so clearly broken. I am going to go down the street and ask my rep what he is going to do about this.
Raise money for lawyers week?
Is Joe Miller a declusterfucker?
Thanks to diligent and inept (some of it is very skillful bungling so the chosen can benefit) efforts you are living in a clusterfuck state. It is not all Alaska's fault to be a clusterfuck state. We have in fact been a clusterfuck nation for
a number of years.
What a Morton's fork for McAdams.
Leave the questionable voting apparatus unchallenged this time- or support efforts to expose the failures and possibly have the outcome favor Joe.
Clusterfuck status makes these Mortons forks all too frequent.
Is Joe Miller a declusterfucker?
In addressing the electoral issues,possibly; but only on the way to his ultimate goal, becoming the head clusterfucker in charge of the Alaska Congressional delegation.
My comment at 10:34 does not answer your question. I think there ought to be discussion about what to do.
Do Democrats either with or without McAdams have standing to file separate challenges?
The right thing to do is clear- get to the bottom of what has happened and fix things so that future elections are clean of this.
It seems that if the Democratic party proceeded then McAdams would have the decision to join in rather than put him in the position of being the challenger.
No answer- just a question- what are the Democratic party options to participate in either a separate challenge or Miller's challenge.
There are two good reasons why Democrats should sit back and relax and stay out of the Miller lawsuits.
First, McAdams ran 30,000 votes behind Miller. Do we really want to elect Miller instead of Murkowski?
Second, at this point the loudest efforts to thwart the will of the people, as expressed in the write-in plurality for Murkowski, are coming from Joe Miller, the Tea Party Express, and, in terms of initial financing, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. Why should we sign on to that fundamentally antidemocratic effort and make ourselves look bad along with Joe Miller and his cohorts?
Mark Regan
Anchorage
I agree with Mark Regan. We have to be realistic. If not McAdams, I'd rather have Murkowski any day.
The thing that's beautiful about Murkowski winning is that Republican donors will be supporting her newly declared war on Palin. They are happy to have someone to do it for them. No Democrat could do what Murkowski is about to do without being vilified in the press.
I expect Lisa Murkowski to continue to govern as she has-with the exception of her no quarters offensive against Palin and her followers.
After this election it is clear to Murkowski that there is no compromise or getting along with Palin and her supporters.
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