2010 United States Senate election in Alaska
The 2010 United States Senate election in Alaska took place on November 2, 2010, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Alaska, alongside 33 U.S. Senate elections in other states, elections in all states for the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as various state and local elections. The general election was preceded by primary elections which were held on August 24, 2010. Scott McAdams, the Mayor of Sitka, became the Democratic nominee; Joe Miller, an attorney and former federal magistrate, became the Republican nominee after defeating incumbent U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski. Miller was endorsed by the Tea Party movement and former Governor Sarah Palin. Murkowski announced that despite her defeat in the primary, she would run in the general election as a write-in candidate.
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Borough and census area results Murkowski: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% Miller: 30–40% 40–50% 50–60% McAdams: 30–40% 40–50% | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in Alaska |
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Murkowski garnered more than 100,000 write-in votes in the general election, 8,000 of which were challenged by Miller for various errors including minor misspellings. Even if the challenged votes were all thrown out, Murkowski still had a lead of over 2,100 votes when the counting was done. The Associated Press and the Alaska GOP called the race in Murkowski's favor on November 17, and Murkowski proclaimed herself the winner on November 18. Miller did not concede the race and instead filed legal challenges which stopped the Alaska Division of Elections from certifying Murkowski as the winner. On December 10, the Alaska Superior Court in Juneau rejected Miller's State law claims, ruling that Alaska statutes and case law do not require perfect spelling on write-in ballots if voter intent is clear. The Superior Court judge also dismissed Miller's claims of vote fraud as based on speculation. Miller took his appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court, citing a provision in the Alaska election statute that says there shall be "no exceptions" to the rules for counting ballots, and arguing that therefore, all ballots with misspellings or other deviations should be thrown out. The court heard oral arguments on December 17. Miller also had a pending case in federal court raising U.S. constitutional claims that the Elections and the Due Process Clauses were violated by state election authorities; the federal court could consider the claims once Miller's State court options were exhausted.
On December 30, 2010, Alaska state officials certified Lisa Murkowski as the winner of the election, making her only the second U.S. Senate candidate since the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to win election via write-in and defeat candidates with ballot access, after Strom Thurmond in 1954. On December 31, Miller announced at a news conference in Anchorage that he was conceding. Murkowski thus became the first person since 1970 to win election to the Senate with under 40% of the vote.