On December 6, two Colorado presidential electors sued the Governor and Secretary of State of Colorado, to establish that they, and all presidential electors, have a constitutional right to vote for any qualified presidential candidate when they vote as electors on December 19. Baca v Hickenlooper, 1:16cv-2986.

The two electors, Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich, received an e-mail from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office on November 18. The e-mail says, “1-4-304(5) of Colorado Revised Statutes state that presidential electors shall (must) vote for the presidential/vice-presidential ticket that receives the most votes in the state. Thus, if an elector failed to follow this requirement, our office would likely remove the elector and seat a replacement elector until all nine electoral votes were cast for the winning candidates.” The e-mail is signed by Joel Albin, Ballot Access Manager, Elections Division.

Baca and Nemanich are Democrats. They have been telling the public and the news media that they believe the Republican nominees for president and vice-president would, if sworn into office, do great harm to the United States. Baca and Nemanich say they have been communicating with other presidential electors from both major parties, hoping to form a group of electors would who vote for a candidate other than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The basis for their lawsuit is that they face an imminent threat of being replaced as electors, and that such a replacement would violate Article Two, and the Twelfth and First Amendments.

Here is the eight-page complaint.

The case is assigned to Judge Wiley Daniel, a Clinton appointee.

A U.S. District Court in Philadelphia will hear Stein v Cortes, 2:16cv-6287, on Friday, December 9, at 1:30 pm in Courtroom 6B. This is the lawsuit over whether Jill Stein is entitled to a presidential recount in Pennsylvania. A state court ruled earlier that the voters who want the recount must pay $1,000,000, and that the Stein campaign can’t pay that for them.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has finished its election returns for the November 8, 2016 election. Jill Stein received 12,104 write-ins for president. This is the largest number of presidential write-ins ever recorded in a North Carolina general election. The previous record had been Ralph Nader’s 1996 showing of 2,108.

It is conceivable that Ralph Nader might have received even more than 12,104 for president in North Carolina in 2000, his strongest year. However, because he didn’t qualify to have his write-ins tallied in 2000, no one will ever know. North Carolina won’t tally presidential write-ins unless the candidate files and submits a petition signed by 500 registered voters.

The November 2016 returns also show that 47,381 write-ins for president, for candidates other than Jill Stein, were cast. North Carolina county election officials were thus obliged to examine a total of 59,485 presidential write-ins, in order to tally the Stein write-ins. This was undoubtably costly and time-consuming. One hopes that North Carolina county election officials will realize that if Stein had been on the ballot, taxpayer money and resources would have been saved. If county election officials asked the legislature for a liberalization of the ballot access laws, at least for president, the legislature might listen. Thanks to Kevin Hayes for the news.