On November 15, China held elections for local legislative bodies. The Chinese Constitution says anyone who has not been convicted of a crime, and who is an adult citizen, may run. But in practice, only candidates approved by the Communist Party may run. The BBC tried to interview an independent candidate, but when the BBC team went to the residence of the independent, 25 plain clothes police prevented the candidate from leaving her house to speak to the BBC reporters. When she tried to speak from the interior, out a window, the police covered up the window. They also put their bodies and hands in from of the camera to prevent filming. See this story, which has a riveting film of the incident.

UPDATE: this article says many write-in votes were cast in the November 15 elections.

The Jill Stein write-in in North Carolina is now 3,468, triple what had been reported yesterday. The number keeps rising as election officials examine the write-in ballots to see how many she has. She was the only declared write-in candidate for president in North Carolina. See here. Thanks to Kevin Hayes for the link.

The previous high write-in vote for president in North Carolina had been Ralph Nader’s 1996 total, but Stein has now surpassed that.

Baltimore has partisan elections for city office. Here is a link to the unofficial election returns for that office, which was on the ballot last week. Scroll down; Mayor is just underneath U.S. House. The Mayor election percentages: Democratic 57.56%; Republican 10.13%; Green 9.97%; write-in 22.33%.

When the official canvass is finished, we will learn what share of the write-ins went to Sheila Dixon, a former Mayor who lost the Democratic 2016 primary for Mayor but who entered the race as a write-in on October 11, 2016. Probably over 99% of the write-ins were for her.

The Green Party had never before run a candidate for Mayor of Baltimore who was on the ballot.