Some commenters to this website seem very interested in the accuracy of official election returns. Forty-two states have procedures for post-election audits. The National Association of Secretaries of State issued this report in September 2021, describing each state’s law on post-election audits.
The states that don’t seem to have such laws are Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and South Dakota.
The Courthouse News Service has this article about the oral argument in the Eleventh Circuit in Cowen v Raffensperger, the Georgia lawsuit over the 5% petition for U.S. House candidates who are not members of a party that polled 20% of the vote in the last election for president in the entire U.S., or 20% for Governor of Georgia.
The article says the attorney for the Secretary of State said sometimes it costs millions of dollars for a Democrat or a Republican to win a primary for U.S. House, and therefore it is seemly that a petition drive for an independent or minor party candidate might also be very expensive. But half the time, major party U.S. House primaries in Georgia only have one (or zero) candidates on the ballot.
In 2018, out of the 14 districts, there were no Republicans on the primary ballot in the 5th district, and there was only one Republican on the ballot in districts one, two, four, six, eight, nine, eleven, and fourteen. In the 2018 Democratic primaries, there was no Democrat on the ballot in the eighth district, and there was only one Democrat on in the second, fifth, eleventh, thirteenth, and fourteenth districts.
In 2020, there was only one Republican on the ballot in districts three, four, five, ten, eleven, and twelve. There was only one Democrat on the ballot in districts two, three, six, eight, eleven, and fourteen.
So, for those two election years, out of 56 primaries, in 27 of them the winner could have won by spending zero money.
America Votes 34, by Rhodes Cook, has just been published. It has election returns for 2019 and 2020, for president, U.S. Senate, and governor, by county. It also has returns for U.S. House elections. It is part of the series that has been published, every two years, starting in 1956.
Most large and medium-size libraries have collections of America Votes.
The Federal Election Commission still hasn’t published its 2020 book of election returns, which will be called “Federal Elections 2020”. The FEC book is free but has no returns for governor, and no county-by-county returns. Both America Votes and Federal Elections 2020 have primary returns as well as general election returns.
Assemblymember John J. Salka (R-Brookfield) has introduced a bill to repeal the harsh changes made to ballot access in 2020. The bill doesn’t have a number yet.
On December 14, the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) submitted this amicus curiae brief in the Oregon Supreme Court, asking the court to hear Bowers v Betschart, S069065. The Lane County, Oregon “Freedom from Aerial Spraying of Herbicides Bill of Rights” initiative would have amended the county charter. Even though the initiative had enough valid signatures (over 11,000) the county election office rejected it because it felt that the measure encompasses different subjects.
The initiative consists of “the right to be free from Chemical Trespass” and “The right to clean air, water, and soil.”
Never before had any Oregon initiative, whether statewide or local, been rejected on such grounds before the actual vote had been held.
