On December 16, some Ohio voters filed a lawsuit in state court, arguing that Republican presidential elector Christina Hagan should not be permitted to serve as an elector, because she is an Ohio state legislator. The Ohio State Constitution forbids members of the legislature from holding any other public office, whether federal or state. The case is Cain v Hagan, Court of Common Pleas, Stark County. Here is an article about the lawsuit, which has a link to the complaint. Thanks to the Election Law Blog for the link.

The California Statement of Votes for November 2016 is here. On page three, one sees that 14,610,509 ballots were cast. A few pages later, one sees the returns for U.S. Senate. Only 12,244,170 votes were cast for that office. This means that 2,366,339 voters cast a ballot, but did not vote for U.S. Senate. They represent 16.2% of all ballots.

There is always some drop-off between votes cast for President and votes cast for U.S. Senate, but 16.2% is very large and probably unprecedented in California. U.S. Senate is immediately below President on the ballot. The cause of this drop-off is surely that only two Democrats were on the ballot for U.S. Senate, with no write-in space.

The last time California had a U.S. Senate election and a presidential election in the same year, in which the top-two system did not exist, was 2004. In 2004, the drop-off was only 4.3%. In 2004 the number of ballots was 12,589,683, and the number of votes for U.S. Senate was 12,053,293. In 2004 voters had a choice of five candidates, and write-in space.

Michael Baca is a Colorado Democratic presidential elector who expects to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. He was interviewed by Brad Friedman, on BradCast, for Pacifica radio. Here is a link to the full interview. At the 27-minute mark, he explains that the Colorado presidential elector ballots on December 19 are pre-printed with the names of Hillary Clinton for President and Tim Kaine for Vice-President. In response to the interviewer’s question as to how he can therefore vote for others, he first mentions “white-out”, but then says he presumes he can cross out the printed names and write in his eventual choices. He has said he will vote for Republicans for those offices. Later in the interview he mentioned John Kasich or Evan McMullin.

Michael Baca is not one of the plaintiffs in the Colorado lawsuit over presidential electors. It appears to be a coincidence that one of the plaintiffs, another Colorado elector, has the same surname. She is Polly Baca.