No one knows yet who won the New York 22nd U.S. House seat. Oneida County still has thousands of disputed ballots to review. See this story. Thanks to Joe Burns for the link.
1
This story says that approximately 10,000 ballots cast in Pennsylvania haven’t been added into the election results, and can’t be, until the U.S. Supreme Court does something about its earlier order to keep them segregated.
On November 6, 2020, a California trial court issued an injunction, permitting the proponents of a gubernatorial recall petition to have four more months to complete their petition. Heatlie v Padilla, Sacramento County Superior Court, 34-2020-800003499.
Without the injunction, the petition would have been due on November 17, 2020. Now it is due March 17, 2021. The petition needs 1,495,709 valid signatures. On December 19, proponents said they have approximately 800,000 signatures.
The basis for the ruling is the covid-19 health crisis. Earlier in 2020, California state trial courts had granted more time for two statewide initiatives. However, the federal and state courts in California denied any similar relief to two independent presidential candidates and the Common Sense Party. The two independent candidates were Don Blankenship of the Constitution Party, and Joseph Kishore of the Socialist Equality Party. But, in fairness to the courts, the initiative and recall petition proponents had demonstrated that they might have succeeded without the health crisis, a showing that was not made by the independent candidates nor the Common Sense Party. Also, the Common Sense Party’s efforts (a registration drive) will not be wasted just because they failed to qualify in 2020. Unlike a petition drive, a registration drive is cumulative and the work done in 2020 for the Common Sense Party might help them qualify for the 2022 election. Thanks to Eric Garris for this news.
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.