On January 3, the Ohio Libertarians whose names were on the Gary Johnson ballot access petition (as the persons responsible for the petition and for making substitutions) filed this brief in the Ohio Supreme Court. The case is State ex rel Fockler v Husted, 2016-1863. The state’s brief will be filed later this week. The case is being expedited because Ohio has some local partisan elections in 2017, and candidates filing in a 2017 primary must do so in February 2017.
“Drop-off”, in the study of elections, means the share of voters who cast a ballot but don’t complete the ballot. For U.S. Senate, in November 2016, the California drop-off was 16.20%. In other words, almost one-sixth of the voters who cast a ballot didn’t bother to vote for U.S. Senate, which was the second item on the ballot, just after president.
This is undoubtedly because the November 2016 California ballot forced voters to either vote for one of two Democrats, or not to vote for U.S. Senate at all. This happened because of Proposition 14, the top-two system, which has been in effect in California since 2011.
The drop-out rate for U.S. Senate in California in the past 75 years has been:
2016 16.20%
2012 4.72%
2010 2.92%
2006 4.02%
2004 4.26%
2000 4.66%
1998 3.55%
1994 4.34%
1992 5.05%
1988 4.42%
1986 2.87%
1982 3.21%
1980 5.10%
1976 8.17%
1974 4.12%
1970 2.13%
1968 3.55%
1964 2.64%
1962 4.75%
1958 .95%
1956 3.36%
1954 4.19%
1952 12.81%
1950 4.15%
1946 4.35%
1944 7.33%
Years not mentioned above had no U.S. Senate election.
The National Conference of State Legislatures has posted this useful calendar of when each state’s legislature will come into session in 2017. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
According to this story, the voters of Idaho chose four presidential electors for the state on November 8, 2016, who included two federal employees. Afterwards this was noticed, and the two electors didn’t show up at the December 19 presidential elector meeting. When electors don’t attend the meeting, they can easily be replaced, and they were replaced in this case. Thanks to Jim Riley for the link.
Texas Representative Mike Schofield (R-Houston) has introduced HB 771, which would require presidential electors to vote for the presidential candidate who won the most popular votes in Texas, and be replaced if he or she failed to do so. See this story.
