The New York Times has this interesting story about ballot-qualified minor parties in New York. It focuses on the fairly rare instances when these parties have primaries in which all write-ins are counted (they are only counted if a particular type of petition has been filed in advance of the primary). It also says, near the bottom of the article, that write-ins are more common in primaries now than they were in the past. In the past, all New York state precincts used mechanical voting machines, and it was difficult for any voter to cast a write-in, when those machines were in use. A voter had to find a particular kind of lever on the machine to access the paper roll on which a write-in vote could be cast, and most voters didn’t know how to do that. But for the last decade, New York has used paper ballots, which makes it much easier to cast a write-in vote.

At the New York congressional primaries on June 26, the Reform Party had arranged for all write-ins to be counted in its primary for the 15th U.S. House district. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won that nomination, with 9 write-ins. No names were printed on the ballot. There were also 13 write-ins for other individuals, none of whom got as many as Ocasio-Cortez. Therefore, she was considered nominated.

However, she declined the nomination, because she is also running as the Democratic nominee in the 14th district, and New York state law doesn’t let individuals run for two offices simultaneously. See this story. Thanks to Frank Morano for the link.

Vice-president Michael Pence’s PAC recently sent a $5,000 campaign contribution to Carol Miller of New Mexico, a former Green Party congressional candidate. According to this story, Pence’s PAC sent the money to the wrong Carol Miller. The PAC intended the money to go to a West Virginia Republican congressional nominee who is also named Carol Miller.