Posts tagged Write-in candidate

Joe Miller (Image by zieak via Flickr)

When is it time to give up? Joe Miller doesn’t think he’s hit that point. But the only path he has to becom­ing Sen­a­tor rep­re­sent­ing Alaska is to have every bal­lot he’s chal­leng­ing get thrown out, and then have a man­ual recount that might give him another cou­ple thou­sand votes.

But what galls me is that this is no longer about win­ning the elec­tion. This is about dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers. For Miller to “win,” he has to find a way for the state gov­ern­ment to ignore votes cast by peo­ple who wanted Lisa Murkowski to rep­re­sent them in the Sen­ate. In other words, he is actively try­ing to under­mine democracy.

I am per­fectly happy to sup­port recounts, man­ual or oth­er­wise, as long as the goal is to divine the will of the peo­ple. And I’m happy to sup­port efforts to ensure that the peo­ple who vote are the peo­ple who are legally enti­tled to do so. But when the goal becomes dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers, it tears at the very fab­ric of our soci­ety. I can­not and will not sup­port that.

I’m sure this must hap­pen with Democ­rats as well, but the only instances of which I’m aware are Repub­li­cans. It hap­pened in Florida in 2000, Wash­ing­ton in 2004, and Min­nesota in 2008. In every case, there was a Repub­li­can effort to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. I’d like to know if there have been any Demo­c­ra­tic (aside from Dix­ie­crat) efforts to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. Can any of you point to one?