| Subject: [EL] still more news |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 12/17/2010, 3:38 PM |
| To: Election Law |
I watched about 2/3 of this argument before I lost the audio
connection. My sense is that the Justices were unlikely to rule
for Miller, but it is not clear to me whether they will reach
the merits of some of these issue or avoid them by saying that
they put them off now and rule on them only if they come up in a
future recount. Assuming there is no problem with issuing
advisory opinions, it would seem to make sense to resolve at
least the major questions of statutory interpretation now,
because that would potentially moot or make very important any
potential recount after certification.
I expect that if the court reaches the merits it will side with
the state and say that the state can have a system to count
minor misspellings. I don't know if they will say anything about
the ballots in which voters wrote in for Murkowski but did not
fill in the oval as directed.
You can read my live blog entries as I wrote them below the
fold.
Could
be.
Follow up question: who will notice?
-- Rick Hasen William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law Loyola Law School 919 Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211 (213)736-1466 (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org