On October 28, the public high school for Grand Rapids, Minnesota, released the results of its mock presidential election. The high school ballot included all nine presidential candidates who are on the actual Minnesota November ballot. This article carries the results. The two major party nominees only received 69% of the total high school vote.
Politico has this interesting story about the history of the Reform Party of New York, which traces its origins to the 2014 gubernatorial election. Even though the story is quite detailed, it doesn’t explain exactly how it is that the Reform Party has no presidential nominee this year. The article says the leadership recognized by the state nominated Donald J. Trump, so one wonders why there is no presidential nominee for the party. The Sliwa faction of the party was opposed to nominating Trump, but the article doesn’t explain how the Sliwa faction apparently prevailed on that. Thanks to Frank Morano for the link.
For some time, individuals have claimed that vote fraud must exist because there were 49 precincts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in November 2012, which reported zero votes for Mitt Romney. Now two political scientists, Richard Pildes and Stephen Ansolabehere, have done research into whether there were any precincts in the same election who reported zero votes for President Obama. They found 38 such precincts, and they excluded all precincts with fewer than 20 votes cast. They also believe there are some more they could have found, but data was not available. See their post at the election law blog here.
On October 27, the Arkansas Supreme Court voted 5-2 to remove one of the two medical marijuana initiatives from the November 8 ballot, even though everyone agrees that the petition had enough signatures of registered voters. Benca v Martin, cv-16-785. The majority opinion is fifteen pages; the two dissents are seven pages. Here is the opinion.
The initiative needed 67,887 signatures. Proponents submitted 117,547. The Secretary of State determined that 77,516 signatures were valid. But a voter challenged the Secretary of State’s determination, so the matter was sent to a special master who examined all of the disputed signatures. The master determined that another 2,087 signatures should be invalidated, but that still left enough valid signatures. The master’s report was issued on September 27, and the state then went ahead with ballot printing, leaving the initiative on the ballot.
But then the State Supreme Court majority invalidated some more signatures, not on the grounds that the signatures weren’t valid, but because the proponent of the initiative did not furnish all the paid circulators with a copy of the state’s handbook for circulators. Also some signatures were invalidated because the employer had not done a police background check on some of the circulators; or, if he had, he did not report the date of the police check accurately. Some more signatures were invalidated because the circulator used a Post Office address instead of a physical residence address. As a result, the Court held the petition was short 2,475 signatures.
There is another medical marijuana initiative on the ballot, issue Six. No one challenged the Issue Six petition validity, although Issue Six was challenged for having a misleading title. However, on October 13, the State Supreme Court had ruled that the Issue Six title is proper.
The Arkansas Supreme Court is one of the few State Supreme Courts in the nation with a female majority; the other such states are California, New Mexico, and New York. In the Benca decision, all four females on the court voted to remove the initiative from the ballot, whereas a majority of the male justices voted to leave the measure on the ballot. Thanks to Andy Craig for the news.
On October 28, the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office posted the list of official write-in candidates for president. Here is the list. The write-in candidates are listed directly under the list of ballot-listed candidates. Thanks to Larry West for the link.
