Alaska Supreme Court rules against Miller

Alaska's highest court ruled against Republican Joe Miller's legal challenge to the results of his Senate contest against Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) late Wednesday. 

The court rejected Miller's claim that state elections officials improperly counted some 8,300 write-in ballots for Murkowski, effectively ending any hope Miller had of overturning the election result.

Wednesday's decision marks the second rejection of Miller's legal argument in a state court in Alaska, and state elections officials are expected to move swiftly to officially certify Murkowski as the winner of the November election.

In its decision, the state Supreme Court made clear that there are "no remaining issues raised by Miller that prevent this election from being certified."

Miller still has the option of appealing in federal court.

After the Tea Party-backed Miller defeated Murkowski in a GOP primary earlier this year, she waged a write-in bid in the general election, ending a prolonged vote count with a lead of more than 10,000 votes. 

Miller's lawsuit claimed that the state employed a faulty and arbitrary voter-intent standard to the counting of write-in ballots and should not have counted ballots that misspelled Murkowski's name.