[Vision2020] Alaska vote count

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Wednesday 10 November 2010 10:20:21 Andreas Schou wrote:
> Let me clarify. Alaska's law (actually, SecState regulation, not law)
> notwithstanding, you think it's Constitutionally permissible to refuse
> to count a vote over a misplaced 'u' when the voter intent is
> otherwise clear?

The answer to your question should be no, but on what a court might decide I 
won't speculate. One does wonder, though, how far one might acceptably wander 
with alternative spellings. For example, if one writes Murkowsi with the 
International Phonetic Alphabet for American English as

mɜːʳcaʊsciː

(highlight, then change font to Lucida Sans Unicode, Arial, or Times New Roman 
if you can't see the correct symbols)

is that an acceptable spelling? Even though the phonetic spelling may conform 
exactly to an international pronunciation standard, requiring a particular 
idiomatic, familial, spelling seems churlishly, and in the case of election 
return counting, greedily, restrictive.

Aside from Murkowski's name, is a phonetic spelling of a word acceptable as an 
individual's intent in a legal document, say, a contract, for example?

By the way, http://ipa.typeit.org/ with Flash, is a handy page to bookmark.


Ken