Congressional Elections, Write-in Candidacy | featured news

Alaska's bitterly contested Senate election went to state court Monday when Republican Joe Miller sued the state over the way write-in ballots ...

As Senator Lisa Murkowski flew home to Alaska on Wednesday, The Associated Press declared her the winner of her long-shot write-in bid for re-election. Neither the Murkowski campaign nor the campaign of her competitor, Joe Miller, a Tea Party favorite who was backed by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, made an immediate comment.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's campaign on Thursday accused observers for rival Joe Miller of making petty challenges in the counting of voters' write-in ballots in an attempt to tilt the Alaska Senate race in their favor.

Rows of gray plastic tables fill a sprawling room that overlooks the snow-covered peaks of this port town, where America will begin to learn the answers Wednesday to the final pressing questions of the elections of 2010: Do the people of Alaska know how to color, and do they know how to spell?

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska faces high hurdles as a write-in Senate candidate -- her own campaign demonstrated as much on Monday with a rather striking mistake in the first online ad of her renewed re-election bid.