On December 10, a New Jersey state appeals court heard arguments in In Re Malinowski, A-3542-21T2. Here is a news story about the hearing. The three judges seemed very engaged in the case, and although the story says they didn’t tip their hand about their opinions, fusion advocates left the hearing feeling optimistic.
On December 17, presidential electors are meeting in state capitols to choose the president. Although not all state meetings have been held, so far there are no “disobedient” presidential electors.
On December 16, U.S. House member Victoria Spartz, who has been elected as an Indiana Republican three times, said she is leaving the House Republican Conference and that she will not participate in the Republican Caucus. However, she will remain a member of the Republican Party.
Indiana does not have registration by party, so the only method in which party membership can be determined is statements from the individual.
She lives in Noblesville and represents the Fifth Indiana District. She was born in Ukraine.
Currently there are no independents in the U.S. House.
James Moyer wrote a book several years ago, explaining to readers that in the past, voters could vote for individual candidates for presidential elector. The book is “Winner-Takes-All: The Secret History of the Electoral College.” By 1984, voters in all states had lost this ability. Vermont and Louisiana had been the last states to let voters cast votes for individual elector candidates.
Now Moyer has put up a webiste about this. See it here. If one goes to the website, one can play a very clear ten-minute youtube that furnishes the information that is in the book.
If ballots still let voters vote for each individual elector candidate, the law on presidential qualifications would be much clearer than it is now. Most states won’t print the names of presidential candidates on their ballots if that candidate doesn’t meet the constitutional qualifications. But if people understood that the true candidates in November are the elector candidates, that policy would change. Back in 1892, when the Prohibition Party nominated a 33-year-old for vice-president, no state kept the ticket off the ballot, and the Prohibition Party was on every government-printed ballot in the nation, except for South Dakota; and the South Dakota omission had nothing to do with the qualifications issue.
Jonathan Makeley has examined the November 2024 election returns reported by each New Hampshire town. These documents include write-ins for president. He finds these totals for presidential candidates who were not on the New Hampshire ballot but who were on in at least one state: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 319; Peter Sonski 134; Claudia De la Cruz 126; Cornel West 47; Vermin Supreme 47; Randall Terry 15; Shiva Ayyadurai 10; Joel Skousen 4.
New Hampshire doesn’t have a procedure for a write-in candidate to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. The Secretary of State sometimes compiles the write-ins for candidates he deems of interest, and includes them in the official election returns. But other times he doesn’t. It is not known if the Secretary of State will include these results.
