Alaska's write-in ballot count to begin despite challenge

(CNN) -- Alaska election officials will begin counting write-in ballots Wednesday despite a federal court challenge by the campaign of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, state director Gail Fenumiai said.

The complaint filed in federal court Tuesday afternoon asks Fenumiai's office to "adhere" to state law in the counting of write-in ballots, limiting what the suit called "subjective" voter intent rules that were issued this week.

Miller's campaign has blasted the Division of Elections' standards as "extraordinarily ambiguous."

The suit requests a court hearing Wednesday over the rules and asks for an injunction.

The guidelines say poll workers must consider the voter's intent when determining whether to count a ballot for a write-in candidate.

The Miller suit says, according to state election law, that a write-in vote can't be accepted if the voter did not correctly write either the full name or last name of a candidate; the voter wrote a candidate's name incorrectly, or misspelled it; or the name written on the ballot is not the name used on the candidate's certificate of candidacy.

"The Miller Campaign has consistently maintained that every valid, lawful vote should be counted," campaign attorney Ton Van Flein said in a statement. "We have further held to the expectation that the state laws, as written, should be followed, and that they should not be changed now, after the votes have been cast.

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