ANCHORAGE, Alaska—
At a Thursday press conference, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s campaign announced that it’s received reports of voter intimidation and fraud -- and plans to sue the state in order to investigate.In addition, the campaign says it’s setting up a hotline to report voter fraud, adding that it’s already received some allegations.
The Miller campaign says it received a signed affidavit from a poll watcher who said at a poll in Fairbanks, election workers were able to open up the ballot box and move around ballots by hand.
The affidavit also alleges that the ballot counter on the box was broken, and that poll workers didn’t know how many ballots were inside.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaign says the last-minute announcement is an act of desperation by the Miller campaign. The Miller campaign says it will be taking action in certain voting precincts Friday.
“We’re going to be going into state court tomorrow asking for the list of voters, where we’re going to do a complete and full audit to make sure that the ballots counted in each precinct actually number with the people that signed in the voter rolls,” said Miller campaign spokesperson Floyd Brown.
“We remain confident that 98 percent of all the votes being cast as a write-in are being credited for Lisa Murkowski -- that obviously is positive for our campaign,” said Murkowski campaign spokesperson Kevin Sweeney. “Faced with those same numbers, the same results, it appears that for the Miller campaign it has become desperation time.”
Counting continues Friday in Juneau, with 45 percent of the write-in vote counted.
The number for the Miller campaign’s voter fraud hotline is 1-866-446-4138.
Contact Jason Lamb at jlamb@ktuu.com
