In November 2010, Alaska election officials determined that Lisa Murkowski had been re-elected to the U.S. Senate on write-in votes. Her Republican opponent, Joe Miller, then filed a lawsuit, arguing that the election tally erroneously included votes for Murkowski that were either invalid, or at least had been cast by voters who should not have been allowed to vote. His lawsuit could not have succeeded on the write-in spelling issue alone, because the tally showed that Murkowski had won even if misspelled write-ins had been discarded. Miller lost the lawsuit.

On June 24, the same state court assessed court costs of $17,000 against Miller. See this story. Miller may appeal. His lawsuit did perform a public service by clarifying the standards for counting write-ins, and Alaska state courts are forbidden to assess court costs against the losing side in lawsuits, if the lawsuit performed a public service.