Election-Campaign Law

Charges of ballot counting “monkey business” in AK Senate primary

As I worried last week, the Miller camp has leveled charges of “ballot counting monkey business” in the closely contested Alaskan GOP Senate primary.

The Anchorage Daily News now tallies 23,472 uncounted or “question” ballots.

In another interesting twist, because the list of names of who requested an absentee ballot are public records (as in all states), Miller is also charging that voters who requested absentee ballots are being contacted and asked about their vote.

I am not familiar enough with how the system works in Alaska, but I would not be surprised to learn that candidates are able to get a list of the names of registered voters whose ballots had been counted up to any particular day. This means that a campaign can target specifically those absentee voters who ballots were requested but not yet counted.

This may be another unanticipated consequence of the postmark law.

Full post as published by Election Updates on August 30, 2010 (boomark / email).