This Fox News story briefly mentions the Free & Equal presidential debate of October 24, but does not describe it. The debate was held in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but the story refers to “Cheyenne, Wisconsin.” The debate was part of the Independent National Convention.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll for Georgia was released on October 26. It includes the Libertarians for both President and the full U.S. Senate term election. See this story.
This story says it is somewhat likely that the Libertarian Party might elect a state legislator in Wyoming next month.
This New York Times story is about a Russian local election, in which the incumbent Mayor of a small town wanted an easy re-election, but he also wanted the election to look genuine, so he recruited a janitor to run against him. To everyone’s shock, the janitor won.
The story says Russia is a “managed democracy”, where “elections take place on schedule, but the incumbent virtually never loses. To achieve this, the police squelch real political opposition, and election commissions bump promising candidates off the ballot with technicalities.”
When that happens in the United States, the Times in recent years has not expressed any complaint. This year, when miniscule technicalities kept Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins off the ballot in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Times either ignored the story, or its news coverage was supportive of the candidate’s removal. In Wisconsin, Hawkins was kept off the ballot because his running mate moved during the petition drive and some of their petitions had the old address listed. In Pennsylvania, a form was faxed in to the Elections Office instead of being attached to the petition. This year, the Green Party was also kept off the ballot in Montana for all office, after Democratic officials invented a procedure to ask voters to retract their signatures that did not exist in the election law, and courts then removed the Green Party. The Times did not cover the Montana story.
In the 32 jurisdictions that have registration by party, here are the number of registered voters in each party and the number of independents:
Democratic: 47,106,084
Republican: 35,041,482
ind & misc: 33,696,700
Libertarian: 652,261
Green: 240,222
Constitution: 129,556
Wk Families: 49,758
Reform: 9,004
oth parties 1,814,973
This data uses the most available figures for each jurisdiction. All are as of September or October 2020, except that New York has no data newer than February 2020, and Massachusetts is August 2020.
In February 2020 the numbers were:
Democratic: 45,715,952
Republican: 33,284,020
ind & misc: 33,530,123
Libertarian: 609,234
Green: 246,377
Constitution: 118,088
Wk Families: 50,532
Reform: 6,665
oth parties 1,712,747
The February 2020 tally is the only one in U.S. history in which the number of voters registered independent and miscellaneous was greater than the number in either major party. But between February and now, Republicans regained their second-place position.
The print issue of Ballot Access News for November 1, 2020, has this information by state. All the numbers in that edition are correct for the state-by-state figures and for the national totals for the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian Parties, and the number of independents. Unfortunately the totals for the other parties, as printed, are not, and the national percentages as printed are not. I forgot to update some of the national totals when I was working with the template of the February 2020 data. A correction will be made in the December 1 issue.
