As of the morning of November 19, according to David Leip’ U.S. Election Atlas, Hillary Clinton has 63,551,937 votes, and Donald Trump has 61,898,577, for a margin of 1,653,360. The final tally in a presidential election is usually not complete until the middle of December, and there are still millions of uncounted ballots.
Assuming trends continue, Trump will probably end up with 46% of the total, rather than 47%.
As of November 16, all briefs are submitted in Libertarian Party of Ohio v Ohio Secretary of State. The case is in the state court of appeals, 16APE-07-496, Tenth District. The main issue is whether the Ohio Constitution, for over 100 years, has required that the state provide all qualified parties with their own primary.
If the Ohio Constitution does have this characteristic, then the ballot access law passed in 2013 violates the state constitution. The Ohio Constitution says, “Article V, section 7. All nominations for elective state, district, county and municipal offices shall be made at direct primary elections or by petition as provided by law.” Nevertheless, the 2013 session of the legislature provided that newly-qualifying parties nominate without any primary. To try to comply with the state constitution, the 2013 law said that everyone nominated by a newly-qualifying party (which itself had to qualify with a petition of approximately 53,000 valid signatures) needs his or her own small petition.
The state points out that I said in testimony some years ago that I believe it is good public policy that small qualified parties nominate by convention instead of by primary. The state is correct. Nevertheless, that does not excuse the fact that regardless of what good policy is, the 2013 bill is in conflict with the state constitution. The Ohio legislature ought to have set in motion a revision of Article V of the state constitution. Instead, it took the easy way out and tried to ignore that state constitutional provision.
Here is the state’s brief, and here is the party’s reply brief.
On November 18, Texas election officials discovered an error on one of the vote tallies for State Senate in last week’s election. The error awarded thousands of Democratic straight-ticket votes to the Libertarian in the race. See this story.
On November 18, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady heard arguments in De La Fuente v Alcorn, e.d., 1:16cv-1201. The state tried to persuade the judge to dismiss the case, but the judge declined. He also instructed De La Fuente to file an amended complaint in the next 30 days. The most important point in the lawsuit is whether there is any state interest in requiring candidates for presidential elector (for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties) to reveal their full social security numbers before the petition may begin to circulate.
This Detroit News story says Republican presidential electors in Michigan are getting lots of communications. Some of it is friendly and tries to persuade them to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Others are hostile and even threatening. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
