Claudia De la Cruz Inches Ahead of Chase Oliver in California Vote Count

As of Thursday, November 14, Claudia De la Cruz has more votes for President than Chase Oliver in California. California won’t certify its results until early December, and has millions of uncounted votes, so this might change. But the total on November 14 is 60,929 for Claudia De la Cruz, and 58.477 vote Chase Oliver. See the Secretary of State’s website here.

The last time the Peace & Freedom presidential nominee outpolled the Libertarian presidential nominee in California was 2008, when Ralph Nader on the PFP line got 108,381, and Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party got 67,582.

New York Had 102,231 Write-ins for President

The New York State Board of Elections website shows 102,231 write-ins were cast for President last week. The State Board still hasn’t got the number of write-ins for each of the declared write-in presidential candidates. But the very large number of write-ins shows that election officials have gone to a great deal of work, and will continue until the tally is done. Each one of those write-ins must be examined by an election administration employee. This is far more expensive and time-consuming than processing votes for candidates whose names are on the ballot.

The write-in total is 1.28% of the total votes cast. See here. Thanks to Tony Roza for the link.

U.S. Supreme Court Puts Upstate Jobs Party Case on December 6 Conference

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Upstate Jobs Party v Kosinski, 24-503, at its December 6 conference. This is the case challenging New York state law that lets individuals bigger campaign contributions to nominees of qualified parties than they may give to independent candidates or the nominees of unqualified parties. Here is the Upstate Jobs Party’s cert petition.

The state has already told the U.S. Supreme Court that it doesn’t plan to file a response.

Partial New York State Election Returns Suggest 80,000 Voters Cast a Write-in Vote for President

Some counties in New York state have tallied the number of write-in votes. The returns for those counties suggest approximately 1% of voters cast a write-in vote for president. If that holds for the entire state, there will probably be 80,000 write-ins when all results are tallied.

Among the five boroughs of New York city, Manhattan (New York County) is the only one with a write-in tally so far. The percentage there is 1.9% of the total, or 11,421 write-ins. This news story has the presidential results by county, but obviously many counties have not finished the write-in tally because they show zero write-ins.