Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller (R) said Thursday that recent decisions by the state's board of elections to change the standards for vote counting amounted to a violation of the "rule of law" and suggested that his opponent, incumbent Sen. and write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, is the beneficiary of special treatment.
Miller is hoping to overcome a wave of Murkowski write-in ballots that could propel her candidacy over his own. In the process, however, he believes that some votes are being counted in her favor due to the application of a "different standard" -- what he calls a decision by the state's board of elections to allow counters to "use discretion in determining voter intent," effectively permitting misspellings of some degree to count. Miller says that this measure was put in place in the final stage of the electoral process to advantage Murkowski.
ABC News's Rick Klein asked Miller Thursday why this wasn't a fair ruling to make, to not disqualify ballots simply because of stray letters. Miller responded that it is not an issue of fairness and claimed that the current procedure does not hew to its historical interpretation.
"I absolutely understand that. I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but the view of it is is that you've got a rule of law, you've got a statute that was enacted by legislators that were elected by the people of the state of Alaska, and they decided that with the write-in campaign that there would be a different standard applied," Miller responded. "I think it's a rule of law issue. Are we gonna change basically the law based upon a particular candidate that is running?"
The GOP candidate went on to explain that this change in electoral regulations was the basis of his most recent lawsuit.
Miller also clarified that both the NRSC as well as Sarah Palin's SarahPAC were contributing money to his ongoing legal effort to cover the recount process.
WATCH (Miller interview starts around the 4:30 mark):
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