Challenger won’t block Murkowski’s Senate victory certification

Joe Miller will not block the certification of Sen. Lisa Murkowski as the winner of November’s Alaska Senate race, but he will not drop his legal challenge of the recount there, either.

Miller said late Sunday he wants his state to have two senators when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 5, so he will not stand in the way of having the election results certified by a federal judge.

{mosads}Murkowski came out on top in the race, by just over 10,000 votes, after losing the GOP primary to Miller and waging a write-in campaign.

“We want the end result of this legal action to be for the people of Alaska to not only have full faith in the outcome of this race but a confidence in the manner in which elections will be conducted in our state in the future,” Miller said, according to The Associated Press. “Election integrity is vital.

“This decision [not to block certification] will allow Alaskans to focus on bringing fairness and transparency to our elections process without distraction of the certification issue,” he said.

Last week, the Alaska Supreme Court rejected, in a 4-0 ruling, Miller’s claim that state election officials had improperly counted some 8,300 write-in ballots for Murkowski, and said there were “no remaining issues” he had raised that would prevent the election from being certified.

The judge hearing Miller’s federal court case gave him until Monday morning to decide whether to press on with his case.