On December 7, Georgia State Representative Valencia Stovall changed her partisan affiliation from Democratic to independent. She has been in the legislature since 2012. However, she did not run for re-election, so she won’t be a member of the legislature in 2021. She lives in Morrow and represents the 74th district.
The Socialist Workers Party candidate for Delegate to U.S. House from the District of Columbia, Omari Musa, polled 6,702 votes last month. If he had polled as much as 7,500 votes, the SWP would now be ballot-qualified in D.C.
Only once has the SWP been a qualified party in D.C., That was immediately after the 1976 election, when the SWP polled 11,237 votes for Dorothy Hawkinson, its nominee for City-Council-at-Large.
Musa polled almost as many votes as the party’s presidential nominee, Alyson Kennedy, received in the entire nation.. She polled 6,791 votes. She was on the ballot in Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington. She did not file for write-in status in any state.
Musa was listed first on the D.C. ballot last month. He outpolled the Green Party nominee for Delegate to the U.S. House.
The Socialist Workers Party began running candidates for federal office in 1940, and ran its first presidential nominee in 1948. At one time or another it was a ballot-qualified party in Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina,Texas, and Vermont. Bernie Sanders was one of its presidential elector candidates in Vermont in 1980. It has never won a partisan office.
The U.S. House seat in New York’s 22nd district is still undecided. See this story. Thanks to Joe Burns for the link.
The election returns are almost final. The main gap are the Pennsylvania totals, and the write-in totals in several states. So far, among the presidential candidates who polled at least 20,000 votes, the totals are:
Joseph Biden, Democratic and Working Families, 81,268,867
Donald Trump, Republican and Conservative, 74,216,747
Jo Jorgensen, Libertarian, 1,865,720
Howie Hawkins, Green, 404,952
Rocky De La Fuente, Alliance, 88,234
Gloria La Riva, Socialism & Liberation, 85,616
Kanye West, independent, 70,298
Don Blankenship, Constitution, 60,148
Brock Pierce, independent, 49,700
Brian Carroll, American Solidarity, 39,188
The Wikipedia article on the election lists the vote by state for the top four candidates, but as of December 18 it does not include the Hawkins write-in vote total from Georgia.
Every state except Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota prints write-in space on November ballots for president. But the 42 states (plus D.C.) that include write-in space have very different policies on whether any write-ins are tallied.
States that have already tallied some presidential write-ins (generally only for candidates who filed for write-in status) are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
States that usually do tally some presidential write-ins, but which have not released any write-in returns so far this year, are Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Pennsylvania hasn’t even released its final totals for candidates who were on the ballot.
Jurisdictions that allow declared write-in presidential candidates to file, and yet refuse to tally the write-ins, are Alaska, D.C., Nebraska, North Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.
States that allow write-ins, but have no write-in filing procedure, and never release any write-in results for president, are Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Oregon.
The Eighth Circuit ruled in McLain v Meier, 851 F.2d 1045 (1988) that “The State has an obligation to count all votes properly cast.” See page 1051. However, it also says that to the extent North Dakota is violating the U.S. Constitution on this point, the remedy ought to be in state court. North Dakota did count presidential write-ins for declared candidates in the past, but stopped doing so in 2008. The law didn’t change; the Secretary of State simply made that decision on his own. Nebraska is also in the Eighth Circuit. It seems plausible that any presidential candidate who filed for write-in status in either of those two states could sue. Howie Hawkins is the most prominent presidential candidate in those two states who was not on the ballot in 2020.
In 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, ruled that the District of Columbia Board of Elections need not count write-ins for declared presidential write-in candidates, because it would cost too much. The decision says that if anyone wants to know how many votes were cast, they are free to file a Freedom of Information request to look at all the ballots. Of course, if anyone did this, their findings would not be “official” and no reference book that tallies the votes for president would accept their findings. Both Merrick Garland and Brett Kavanaugh signed this opinion, Barr v D.C. Board of Elections. Bob Barr, the Libertarian nominee, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse this decision, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
The Virginia Constitution guarantees voters the right to cast a write-in vote in general elections, and the Virginia State Board of Elections formerly tallied write-ins for declared presidential candidates, but stopped doing so in 2012. A lawsuit under the State Constitution might succeed if anyone were to file it. Howie Hawkins was the most prominent presidential candidate who wasn’t on the Virginia ballot in 2020.
