Joe Miller

Who is Joe Miller?

Joseph Wayne "Joe" Miller is an American attorney who was the Republican Party nominee and the Tea Party favorite in the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Alaska. He faced Democrat Scott McAdams and incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who after losing the primary to Miller, mounted a large and well-funded campaign as a write-in candidate in the general election.

Miller then received the second largest number of votes, in the November 2 general election; write-ins came in first. Election officials hand counted the write-ins using a voter intent standard which allowed ballots with misspellings of Lisa Murkowski's name to count for Murkowski, which gave her a lead of over 10,000 votes. Miller's campaign challenged 8,000 of the write in ballots, contending that state law required exact spelling, last name before first, no cross-outs and no additional words such as "Republican". He filed two state court and one federal lawsuit and later one state supreme court appeal, claiming constitutional violations of equal protection, the election clause of the U.S. constitution, and voter fraud as well as violations of the state election statute. The cases were dismissed by the courts because even if Miller had been correct about the law, he would still have lost to Murkowski by at least 2,000 votes. Miller conceded defeat on December 31, and claimed that his battle had been to ensure voter confidence in the election process and transparency.