Joe Miller just pulled out a rabbit.
Alaskans are being manipulated by the Dropzone Kid and from the tone of the comments in the Anchorage Daily News and the Alaska Dispatch, they're totally hacked off.
Even if he manages to squash the votes clearly intended for Lisa Murkowski he is likely to have a mutiny on his hands if he tries to take office.
The Anchorage Daily News just posted an update.......
http://community.adn.com/...
Update, 2:14 p.m.
Floyd Brown, the man responsible for the "Willie Horton" television ad that helped derail the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign in 1988, has signed up for the Joe Miller campaign.
Brown is here in Juneau today for the write-in ballot review and he has called a 4 p.m. press conference to discuss "the direction of the Miller campaign heading into the weekend." Brown is being described by the campaign as "advisor to Joe Miller."
He (Floyd Brown) created a a 1-900 line in 1992 so callers could hear edited excerpts of telephone conversations between Bill Clinton and Arkansas lounge singer Gennifer Flowers. He's also founder of Citizens United, whose Supreme Court case led to the allowance of unlimited donations from corporations and unions to certain types of political committees.
The Anchorage Daily News has posted screen captures of some of the ballot papers that are being challenged by the Miller team. If I were one of those voters I would be seriously angry.
On a day when Veterans are supposed to be being honoured, Joe Miller, a supposed military man is disgracing them at the same time as he is twittering his respects.
JoeWMiller
.On Veterans Day, honoring Marine who lost limbs in Afghanistan, but not spirit http://t.co/... via @washingtonpost
33 minutes ago via Tweet Button
On a side note, Alaska Dispatch reports that the judge assigned to the write in suit recuses himself because of his bad opinion of Joe Miller.
http://alaskadispatch.com/...
Joe Miller's lawsuit to stop misspellings of Murkowski's name from counting as valid write-in votes was originally assigned to Sedwick, but Sedwick quickly removed himself from the case. It turns out Sedwick was the chief judge under whom Miller once worked as a part-time U.S. magistrate judge in Fairbanks, and Miller's sudden departure from the post to instead seek political office left Sedwick with a less than stellar opinion of the man. In fact, Sedwick openly admits he formed a "negative opinion of Mr. Miller," as explained in Sedwick's recusal of himself:
Mr. Miller's service came to an abrupt end when he called me to say that he planned to run for elective office and so would have to resign. Mr. Miller called at about 4:20 PM on the day of his resignation. The process for filling a part-time magistrate judge position is lengthy, a fact well known to Mr. Miller because he had gone through that process. Mr. Miller's failure to give reasonable notice of his resignation left the court with no judicial officer resident in Fairbanks, and no ability to fill the vacancy for many months. This incident caused me to form a negative opinion of Mr. Miller.
Joe Miller obviously doesn't like how the count is going........
from the ADN's latest updates on the count
Update, 12:37 p.m.
We just received the first results of today's count and the trend is similar to what we saw yesterday, with Lisa Murkowski receiving nearly 98 percent of the write in ballots cast.
The Alaska Division of Elections has now reviewed the writes-in for 32 percent of the precincts. More than 89 percent of the 30,023 write-in votes cast are unchallenged for Murkowski.
Another 8.4 percent of the writes-in were challenged by Miller campaign observers but counted for Murkowski by Elections Director Gail Fenumiai.Those include examples of ballots that appear to be filled out correctly but were still challenged (see below). The Miller campaign challenges of those votes still stand, with Miller hoping the courts will rule on them.
The top recommended reader comment on ADN, and in line with about 98% of commenters..........
flybynight
wrote on 11/11/2010 12:34:49 PM:
It's going to take a long time to repair the damage that Palin and Miller have caused to the reputation of our state. The sad part is they did it for money and power and neither one of them gives a dam about Alaska or Alaskans. I'm still a proud Alaskan and always will be but we may never get our world class reputation back due to these two power hungry jerks.
Another
alasscan
wrote on 11/11/2010 12:43:13 PM:
Great way for a Veteran to honor Veteran's Day Joe!
Thousands have given their life to protect this right to vote but you think you have the right to take it away.
If the vote pictured above has been challenged, you Joe, are an abomination to what this country stands for.
Your goal is obvious:
"The Miller campaign expects the courts to have the final say."
The freedoms many have died for is for the voters to have the final say Joe.
UPDATE
Ruh Roh!, update from the Alaska Dispatch. Floyd Brown has started earning his no doubt big bucks already. He gave a press conference in the last couple of minutes............
http://alaskadispatch.com/...
Miller adviser alleges voter fraud, intimidation
Updated 4:10 p.m.: Floyd Brown, a volunteer strategist for the Joe Miller campaign, said there have been serious allegations of fraud and voter intimidation in the election.
"You have to realize, these people have been threatened with their livelihoods," Brown said, citing a fisherman who was told by his commercial fish buyer to remove a Murkowski sticker from his boat. Brown refused to name the fisherman.
Brown declined to directly accuse any group or individual of fraud, saying "We're saying others have alleged fraud, and we take their allegations very seriously."
Murkowski campaign manager Kevin Sweeney was dismissive of Brown's claims.
"For the Miller camp, it's become desperation time," he said.
Brown ends with this comment...........
"We believe Joe Miller is going to be the next United States senator from Alaska."
Hokey Kokey!
Final update for today for anyone still reading
Update, 5:02 p.m.
Results just came in. The Division of Elections is done reviewing write-in ballots for almost half the precincts in Alaska and is still counting nearly 98 percent of them for Lisa Murkowski.
The Division reports 89.78 percent of the write-ins are unchallenged for Murkowski, a number that's held steady during the count.
The Division of Elections overturned challenges by the Miller campaign on another 8 percent of the ballots and counted them for Murkowski. Miller hopes the courts will reverse that.
Just 1.52 percent of the 45,132 write-in ballots reviewed so far have been successfully challenged by Miller ballot observers.
The review of write-in ballots is will continue tomorrow.