Above the Fold Update: Via Drew, the court has denied the injunction Miller wants on counting votes, but the lawsuit will also go on. The reply brief is due Monday, so the decision will come some time after that.

Original Post:
I'm sure you've heard by now, but I don't know that we've discussed it here. Our candidate in Alaska has filed a lawsuit to enjoin the Alaska Division of Elections from using a recently-written policy (as in, written after the election) to discern voter intent in cases where a ballot appears to be cast for Lisa Murkowski, but is not spelled exactly correct.

Patterico has details, including a link to the lawsuit if you're interested in that kind of thing. The policy being challenged -- that is, the guidelines for use when determining whether a vote is for Murkowski or not -- is attached to the lawsuit PDF.

Miller is asking the court to enforce an exact-spelling rule. If the voter did not write exactly "Lisa Murkowski" or "Murkowski", Miller says the vote should not count.

Patterico writes:

At first glance, this might seem overly formalistic and harsh. Say a voter intends to vote for Lisa Murkowski, but writes in “Lisa Murkowsky.” Miller is saying that shouldn’t count as a vote for Murkowski?

Correct — and it looks to me like he’s right. And should be.

Miller’s legal papers, which you can read here (.pdf), argue that, under Alaska law, a write-in candidate’s name must be written “as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy.” The filing quotes legislative language saying:

The rules set out in this section are mandatory and there are no exceptions to them. A ballot may not be counted unless marked in compliance with these rules.

As the Al Franken recount showed, recounts are messy propositions — and depending on the standard you choose, it can sometimes be quite difficult to interpret a ballot. (A good set of examples from the Franken recount is discussed here.) If the Alaska Legislature chose to set out clear rules to avoid such a situation, I say more power to them.

But it's not always that simple. Definitely click over to read what else Patterico has to say, but I'll quote a bit more here and respond below.

I haven’t examined the case law, but the statutory language seems crystal clear. Even if, as I have heard, Alaska applies an “intent of the voter” standard as to your standard ballot markings, I’m not sure the same case law would govern write-in ballots, in the face of such clear rules.

[...]

ItÂ’s a formalistic approach, to be sure. But a degree of formalism is absolutely essential to making law work.

Sorry, Lisa. Your illiterate voters should not have their votes counted. The Legislature has spoken.

This is the part where I disagree with Patterico: The Alaska legislature may have spoken, but the legislature cannot by statute override the U.S. Constitution, which protects, among other things, the right to vote and to have your vote counted.

To be sure, a line has to be drawn. But the overly formalistic line chosen by the Alaska legislature likely disfranchises a non-trivial number of voters in violation of the U.S. Constitution. For example, voters who write "Lis Murkowski", "Lisa Murcowski", and "Lisa Murkowsk" will all be disfranchised if Miller is correct. In fact, the exact-spelling rule, by it's strict nature, leads to less accurate vote counts than the rule drafted by the Alaska Division of Elections.

State-law imposed burdens on the right to vote can be constitutional in many circumstances, but the court will weigh the injury to the right to vote against the interest asserted by the state. What interest will be asserted in favor of the exact-spelling rule? Accuracy in counting is undoubtedly an important public interest and it weighs heavily against the exact-spelling rule. Disfranchisement (and thus, inaccuracy) is the crux of the injury here. That's an substantial injury, probably requiring strict scrutiny of the law. The only other state interest I can see is uniformity, but I doubt that will outweigh the injury. After all, uniformly throwing out all write-in votes would clearly not be a constitutional burden on the right to vote. Uniformity alone can't get you there. Not in the face of voter disfranchisement.

Moreover, the Alaska Supreme Court has a lengthy line of cases holding that “the crucial question in determining the validity of ballot markings is one of voter intent.” For example, the statute requires that the bubble be completely filled in. But that hasn't stopped the Alaska courts in the past from using the principle that voter intent is constitutionally protected to count votes in which the bubble is partially filled.

In short, the right to vote and to have one's vote counted will be weighed against the exact-spelling rule. I can't think of any interests that will weigh heavier than complete disfranchisement for a mere slip of a pen. And so I expect the courts will not side with Miller, but with the Division of Elections. After all, knocking down literacy tests for voting was a pretty big deal at one time.

The one thing I can't decide is if he has a procedural claim. Not that he's right about the exact-spelling rule, but that he's right about it being too late in the process for the Division of Elections to settle on its present counting policy. On the one hand, they picked their policy after the freakin' election. On the other, the Supreme Court let Florida pick counting policy after the election in Bush v. Gore so long as it was evenhanded, so that might not be much of a problem after all.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:08 PM | Comments (150)
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Above-the-Main-Post Update: Drew reads further and writes:

They want to repeal state and local tax deductions.

Looks like the mortgage thing only applies to 2nd homes and mortgages over 500K, not entirely.

They also say roll non-defense, discretionary spending back (starting in '12) to 2010 levels. In other words, lock in all of the Obama spending forever and always.

They can go fuck themselves.

Uh, yeah on that last bit. Roll back spending to 1998 levels -- like as spurred the Miracle Economy of Bill Clinton (TM) -- and that's a good start.

And here we go!

Leaders of President Barack Obama's bipartisan deficit commission on Wednesday proposed reducing the annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security, part of a bold plan to control $1 trillion-plus budget deficits.

The proposal also would set a tough target for curbing the growth of Medicare and recommends looking at eliminating popular tax breaks, such as mortgage interest deduction.

As proposed, the plan by Chairman Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., doesn't look like it can win support from 14 of the commission's 18 members to force a debate in Congress. Bowles is a Democrat and was former President Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff.

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare are making some liberals on the panel recoil. And conservative Republicans are having difficulty with options on how to raise tax revenue. The plan also calls for cuts in farm subsidies, foreign aid and the Pentagon's budget.

"This is not a proposal I could support," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. "On Medicare and Social Security in particular, there are proposals that I could not support."

The Social Security proposal would change the inflation measurement used to calculate cost of living adjustments for program benefits, reducing annual cost-of-living increases. It will almost certainly draw opposition from advocates for seniors, who are already upset that there will be no increase for 2011, the second straight year without a raise.

Overall, that sounds pretty good to me. The cut to the mortgage-interest deduction is of course effectively a hike in taxes for homeowners, but I'm not sure if that alone is a reason to oppose it.

So, here's a serious proposal, quite heavy on the spending cuts and rather light on tax increases, which seems pretty necessary if we're to get spending under control.

A la Allah:

Exit question: Are the majority of Tea Partiers ready to actually make the cuts they talk about in vague, abstract ways, even when such cuts reduce social spending directed towards them?

Exit answer: No.

Here's the sad fact: People want free stuff, including (or especially) those who talk the loudest about ending the flow of free stuff to other people.

That said, this is important stuff, and should be pushed as hard as possible.

But, like a dozen other blue-ribbon deficit-reduction panels' proposals that came before it -- all making similar recommendations -- I expect this will go nowhere.

The Democrats will of course demagogue this, and the GOP will flinch.

Oh: Beating up on "the establishment" is a favorite past-time right now, but it should be remembered the establishment panders to us -- they reflect, then, what we're asking of them.

P.J. O'Rourke noted in his book Parliament of Whores that none of the sensible cuts he suggested would ever actually happen, because for each subsidy, there is a constituency demanding the subsidy -- including rock-ribbed individualist conservatives who don't truck with no government hand-outs (but farming subsidies aren't handouts, you know).

We wind up with a parliament of whores, he wrote, and in a democracy, the whores are us.

And making a similar point -- Milton Friedman.

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Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (486)
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I want to go to there. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (44)
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Steve Gutowski at Eyeblast worries if Christie is going to be perceived as a bully for calling out a bureaucrat by name. (He decides ultimately Christie won't be hurt by doing so in this particular case.)

That's a real worry. I guess the problem comes in if Christie seems to be enjoying calling people out like this, enjoying playing to the camera, enjoying the applause.

Something to watch for.

And yet... issues need to be personalized, too.

Someone will have to explain to me why every plan to improve the education of our kids involves one primary element: Paying teachers and administrators more money to do the jobs they weren't doing all that well to begin with.

Are they holding back on us? Do they have some sick teaching skillz that they're refusing to utilize until they make $200,000 per year?

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Posted by: Ace at 09:15 AM | Comments (122)
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I think the thing that strikes me the most about these speeches of his on foreign soil is that he seems far more comfortable extolling the virtues of a place like Indonesia than he does the United States. When he does talk about the US, itÂ’s mostly in a way that lowers it or at the least fails to praise it.

Yesterday, President Yudhoyono and I announced a new Comprehensive Partnership between the United States and Indonesia. We are increasing ties between our governments in many different areas, and -- just as importantly -- we are increasing ties among our people. This is a partnership of equals, grounded in mutual interests and mutual respect.

Look, I get you have to do the diplomacy thing and make nice but itÂ’s simply false to say that the US and Indonesia are equals. Aside from the massive disparity of the importance of the two countries to the world, do you know how weÂ’re not equals? WeÂ’ve been a foreign aid donor to them for over 50 years. When you take charity from someone, you arenÂ’t equals.

Again, I understand the need for diplomacy but lying and passing on an opportunity to point out the tangible role the US plays in keeping the place afloat is not advancing US interests.

Like any democracy, you have known setbacks along the way. America is no different. Our own Constitution spoke of the effort to forge a “more perfect union,” and that is a journey that we’ve traveled ever since. We’ve endured civil war and we struggled to extend equal rights to all of our citizens. But it is precisely this effort that has allowed us to become stronger and more prosperous, while also becoming a more just and a more free society.

America endured a civil war and fulfilled its promise that “all men are created equal”. Indonesia endured a three decades long brutal military dictatorship. Unless I’ve really missed something big in American history, there’s no way you can say America’s “setbacks” (whatever Obama imagines them to be) are “no different” than Indonesia’s. It is simply a lie to say they are in anyway similar. This goes beyond making Indonesians feel better about themselves and is simply attacking America by false comparison.

Obama then moved onto one of his favorite topics, Islam and the United States. Again, he seems far more comfortable talking up Islam than he ever does Christianity. As always, he is on the defensive when it comes to the conflict between American and Islam.

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Posted by: DrewM at 08:36 AM | Comments (112)
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It's merely doubled under Obama, so George Bush bears a lot of blame.

Let's make sure we make government jobs the most attractive jobs around in all ways -- security, benefits, and now salary, too -- to make sure that our best and brightest don't go into careers that increase the nation's wealth, but instead careers that reduce it.

For the Children! In aggregate, we pay federal workers $40 billion per year in "salary premium" -- excess, unnecessary salary (as compared to similarly-situated workers in the private workforce).

So what could that get you?

Instead of paying the salary premium, the federal government could quadruple funding for the space program or quintuple it for higher education. Or it could give almost $1 billion a year in block grants to every state for primary and secondary education. Rather than spending $40 billion on the salary premium, the federal government could more than double federal spending on preserving the environment and our national parks. Maybe the federal government would like to increase funding for general science and basic research by more than five times its current amount. How about diverting these funds toward shoring up Social Security (its current unsecured future obligations have a present value of about $3 trillion) or Medicare?

$40 billion is the approximate size of President Bush's tax cut for this year and some contend that it is responsible for this year's deficit!

Why is the average pay for federal employees so much more relative to these other broad sectors of the federal budget? Many people point to the $3 billion spent in the last election cycle as evidence that our democracy is being bought, and their case has some merit. But in that same period of time about $80 billion was paid out in a salary premium to federal workers.

Is it unfair to ask what is being bought with this money? Is it unfair to point out that 26% of all voters in the 2000 elections came from union households (a number all out of proportion to the 15% of the labor force that is unionized) -- and that one of the only areas of growth in union membership is coming from organizing government workers?

Federal salaries must be frozen until the private sector passes them.

For the children, you understand.

Posted by: Ace at 07:42 AM | Comments (105)
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Morris has a vested interest in believing this -- as he's looking for a reason why his mega-wave prediction didn't come to pass -- but it is persuasive. And there are polling numbers that indicate it's correct.

Basically, voters who kept saying they were undecided -- even right before the election, the generic ballot would be like 52 R to 40 D, with 8% undecided -- broke big for Democrats right at the end. Dick Morris swipes at them by calling them "low information" and "downscale" voters, which sounds like sniping, but it's sniping I can get on board with.

These were liberal-leaning statist-loving voters, we can imagine, who were unenthused about the elections because Obama hadn't delivered results -- these voters, we can guess, are among those most hurt by the recession, and thus, while ideologically in favor of socialism, were a little disappointed by the effects of socialism on their own lives.

But, in the end, Obama and the Democrats managed to turn them out (punish your enemies, yo!) and thus turned a blowout for the ages into merely a blowout for the decades.

Fortunately for the GOP, only 8 percent of the electorate were late deciders. A full 46 percent were early voters.

These Democratic late deciders were all straight from the party's base:

• 15 percent of single voters decided late, and singles voted 64 percent Democrat.

• 14 percent of under-$25,000-income voters decided late, and voters in this income category voted Democrat by 59-36.

• 20 percent of voters 18-29 decided late, and this group backed Obama by 56-37.

Obama knew if he could get them to the polls, they'd vote Democratic, in the main; but he had to get them there, despite their reservations.

Turnout is what it's all about. We need to remember this in 2012.

Posted by: Ace at 07:24 AM | Comments (86)
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Does anyone buy this? I don't. I think the husband is divorcing her for being an annoying, sexless prat but he's agreed to give her this fig leaf of cover, that this is some kind of political statement.

By the way: Husband-and-Wife? Not Wife and Husband or even better Life Partner and Life Partner?

Twenty points deducted from Slytherin.

I want to divorce the man I love and he wants to divorce me. We do not wish to separate – simply to end our seven-year marriage. Like Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle, who yesterday were denied their request for a civil partnership at a London register office, we would prefer "to secure official status for our relationship in a way that supports the call for complete equality and is free of the negative, sexist connotations of marriage". We are both fed up with being part of the hetero-husband-and-wife brigade that is accorded so much status and privilege.

...

I had never considered how marriage would change my place in the world. Before we even tied the proverbial knot, I became swiftly aware of discrimination against wives. A job in journalism I was up for suddenly became unavailable: a female manager called to say that now I was married she presumed that it would be difficult for me to be a foreign correspondent.

Wait, where is the status and privilege? This is less a substantive point than one about writing a coherent essay -- she begins by saying she's abandoning marriage due to the status and privilege afforded to the married, then begins whining about how awful marriage is in terms of personal costs to herself.

So which is it? Is she being granted too many privileges or being denied too many opportunities?

This "Tyranny of Marriage" (as she titles her 700 word fart) apparently also imposes unbearable costs in terms of clarity of thinking and expression.

This was shocking, but the point I wish to make here concerns the privileges accorded to the wedded heterosexual couple. When you marry, you gain a certain unspoken gravitas, as though society heaves a collective sigh of relief: "Thank God they've grown up." Several husbands and wives actually said to me, albeit with a weary smile, "Join the club". Clink clink. And I soon discovered that marriage really is a club.

Being married pulls you into a new elite. It lends you an air of stability and reliability that singles and divorcees are denied. We assume that those who are unmarried probably have something just a teeny bit wrong with them because they have never managed to persuade another to settle down into that cosy unit of coupledom. This is the smug tyranny of husbands and wives.

Which brings me back to the question of divorce. For those of us who are married but have seen the light, our work is cut out. There is only one ground for divorce: that the marriage has irretrievably broken down. So if we really want to get one we will have to lie. We may have no choice: one of the more recent vows we made to each other was to promise to divorce if the Tories introduce a tax break for married couples. We want no part of that. If there are enough of us, we could start fighting for the right to exchange our marriage certificates for civil partnerships. This would be a step forward in the battle against what Peter Tatchell has described as a form of "sexual apartheid in law".

She's going to have to lie to a judge to secure her fake-divorce, but she's, like, announcing her intent to lie in a widely-published column. Sounds like a plan.

So, gee, when you show up to get your fake political-statement divorce, the judge will deny your request (see, you're lying, right?, and you just told him so), which, surprisingly enough, will grant you additional benefits:

1) You'll remain married, but

2) You'll have a whole new "tyranny" to play martyr about, the tyranny of being forced to remain in a functional marriage because a judge was so oppressive as to have read your column and therefore have been told you were lying.

Best of both worlds, as usual! Assume the posture of heroic resistance and then conspire to do absolutely nothing at all except reap the social benefits of fake heroism and pretend martyrdom.

By the way, to answer the question you've all been wondering about...

You were all correct. Fifteen points awarded to Griffendor!

Posted by: Ace at 06:59 AM | Comments (163)
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On November 10, 1775 the Continental Congress passed the following resolution:

Resolved, That two Battalions of marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required; that they be enlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered as part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.

Ordered, That a copy of the above be transmitted to the General.

President Ronald Reagan summed up perfectly why America loves the Marine Corps when he said, "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem."

The picture above is of Lt. General Lewis B "Chesty" Puller, the most decorated Marine in history.

Posted by: Slublog at 06:38 AM | Comments (72)
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China to the US: I downgrade in your general direction! (I do find it a bit hilarious that a Communist, authoritarian, mercantilist, fiat-money regime like China presumes to lecture anyone on fiscal sanity, but there you have it.)

There are many reasons why China is not the juggernaut people think it is, but it is wrong to blame them for our current financial woes. The simple truth is that we got our own stupid asses into this crack, and we're going to have to get our own stupid asses back out. Pull quote:

All of which really ought to be of interest only to full-on Sinologists, because, the Obama administration’s populist fist-shaking notwithstanding, China’s economic policy is not what ails America — any more than Japan’s economic policy was what ailed America during the Carter years, that awful interlude during which Honda and Toyota viciously conspired to dump affordable, reliable, fuel-efficient automobiles on unsuspecting Americans who really wanted to buy an AMC Gremlin but were duped into an upgrade by those inscrutable Orientals and their long-game industrial policies.

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Posted by: Monty at 03:19 AM | Comments (137)
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