Ever since 1920, the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives has published a booklet entitled “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election” after each presidential election. The Clerk has just published the 2008 booklet. It is 77 pages long and can be seen here.

This booklet uses arbitrary standards. For example, in the presidential table at the rear of the book, the “Independent” column contains the Ralph Nader vote, and Nader is properly credited with votes from every state but Oklahoma (because Oklahoma bans write-ins). This is true, even though Nader had different ballot labels in different states. In most states it was “independent” but in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah, it was something else. But, the “Independent” column collected all of Nader’s votes, regardless of label.

However, in the next-door column, the “Libertarian” column does not include any votes for Bob Barr from Tennessee. Instead, the authors of the table put the Tennessee Barr vote in the “Other” column, because Barr’s ballot label in Tennessee was “independent.” Also the chart omits Barr’s Maine write-in votes, even though the Secretary of State tallied them.

The book is worthwhile, however, even with its faults. Another table at the back includes the nationwide vote for each political party for each House of Congress. The table for U.S. House shows that Libertarians running for U.S. House, under their own party label (as opposed to Libertarians who were running with an “independent” label) polled 1,083,096 votes. The Libertarian Party has polled over 1,000,000 votes for U.S. House four times: 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2008. It is the only party, besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, that has polled over 1,000,000 votes for U.S. House since 1912, when the Progressive Party did so. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the news about the publication of the booklet.