Intent of law will be a good measuring stick

Joe Miller left a number of things in the wake of his failed bid to unseat Sen. Lisa Murkowski, like divisions in the Republican Party and a highlighted need to examine state election law concerning write-in ballots.

Miller’s bid for the Senate and Murkowski’s successful write-in campaign exposed the vagueness of some election laws, such as exactly what counts as a write-in vote. State law says a person has to fill in the bubble next to the write-in option and then write in the candidate’s name.

Whether that means the name needs to be spelled correctly wound up being a topic that wasn’t settled until the state’s Supreme Court weighed in.

En route to the Supreme Court’s ruling, a federal judge described Alaska’s laws on the topic as “poorly drafted.”

“Wisdom would suggest that the Alaska Legislature act to clarify it to avoid similar disputes in the future,” U.S. District Court Ralph Beistline wrote in a decision dismissing Miller’s case.

The Supreme Court’s decision that turned against Miller was based mainly on prior Supreme Court decisions, which held that a voter’s intent was paramount and that minor misspelling shouldn’t stand in the way of that.

But there’s a difference between having something written in statute and having something addressed in court decisions.

For one thing, a statute in a law book carries greater weight. A new court can overturn an old court’s ruling, but to change a statute requires the Legislature to act.

For another, leaving the courts to decide something as important as what constitutes a legal vote leaves the state open to further lengthy and expensive court challenges.

We were always puzzled by why Miller chose to contest the election’s results long after basic math suggested the battle was lost: Even if all of the ballots Miller had contested were thrown out, Murkowski still had enough votes to win handily.

But we don’t fault Miller for asking the courts to weigh in on the question. Supreme Court decisions are generally based on a set of facts specific to each case. The facts of Miller’s case surely differed from the cases that led to the relevant court precedents. So it makes sense, then, that he would at least attempt to see if the cases leading to the precedents establishing voter intent as the standard resembled his enough that those precedents also applied to his case. The courts are the proper venue for that.

But the challenge didn’t come cheap. The court case cost the state more than $100,000. And the state has said that Miller will get a bill for part of that total.

Speaking before the state Senate, Sen. Linda Menard referred to the court cases that came in the wake of the November 2010 U.S. Senate election as a debacle.

We agree and hope that Senate Bill 31, of which Menard is a co-sponsor, will allow the state to avoid similar debacles in the future. The bill states that “the election board shall disregard any abbreviation, misspelling or other minor variation in the form of the name of a candidate.”

Who is to say whether this language would have been enough to satisfy Miller or whether he would have sought out another avenue to challenge the election’s results had such language been in place last November.

Still, we hope SB 31 passes because as Beistline said, state law — and Alaska voters — can only benefit from less ambiguity.