Tea Party strict constructionism in Alaska

Miller's campaign disputed the charge, saying observers are simply challenging votes that don't meet the strict letter of the law — including those with minor misspellings of Murkowski's name or those with legibility or penmanship issues.

Alaska law says nothing about either legibility or penmanship.

To be sure, deficiencies in either legibility or penmanship would serve to obscure accurate determinations of voter intent, which is exactly the standard of evaluating ballots that Tea Republican Miller at the same time argues is a subjective and therefore lawless one.

In other words, there's legal strategy, and there's abject hypocrisy.

eta: And it's nice to see an election law specialist agrees with me:

In this case, throwing out minor misspellings would disenfranchise voters for a technicality. I've traced use of the voter intent standard in State courts back to 1885, and Alaska has a particularly strong version of it.

Rick Hasen at Slate.