It is customary for British political parties to release Christmas videos. The Green Party’s video here has received more attention that most such videos.
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A bill has already been drafted for the Maryland 2019 legislature session, to let Montgomery County use either ranked choice voting or approval voting for its county officer elections. See this story. Thanks to Steve Goodale for the link.
The Daily Oklahoman, daily newspaper for Oklahoma City, has this op-ed in favor of ranked choice voting, written by Chris Powell, the Libertarian nominee for Governor last month.
All states have finished their official vote tallies except for West Virginia. The national totals for U.S. House by party (using the unofficial West Virginia returns, which will probably be almost exactly like the official ones) are:
Democratic 60,447,537; Republican 50,751,049; Libertarian 768,015; Green 224,919; Working Families 217,172; Conservative 207,094; Independent Parties (of Connecticut, Louisiana and Oregon) 74,672; Reform 66,579; Constitution 59,972; Independence Parties (of Minnesota and New York) 57,463; Working Class 53,102; Women’s Equality 41,317; United Utah 36,177; Legal Marijuana Now 15,791; American 15,011; Progressive 10,758; Independent American of Utah 6,686; Liberty Union 3,924; and Socialist Equality 2,213.
The Republican share of the vote, 44.67%, is its lowest share for US House since 2008, when it was 42.94%.
For accuracy, all data was checked against data in the Cook Political Report. The national totals don’t agree because the Cook Political Report, and also Ballotpedia, assign to the major parties the vote cast for minor parties that participated in fusion. BAN disagrees with this approach because if the voter chooses to vote for a minor party, it seems that voter’s vote should be recorded for the party that the voter actually chose.
On December 15, David Krupa, a 19-year-old college student running for Chicago alderman, 13th district, got on the ballot. He had needed 473 valid signatures and had submitted 1,703. But then his opponent, who is backed by the Chicago Democratic organization, submitted 2,700 affidavits from voters who had claimed they had signed for Krupa and that they now wanted to withdraw their signatures. Only 187 of those voters had actually signed for Krupa. The move got so much bad publicity for the organization, it fell apart. See this story. Thanks to Jim Riley for the link.