Private Individual Tallies the Washington, D.C. Write-ins for President

Posted on by January 1, 2025
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Washington, D.C. has a procedure for a write-in declaration of candidacy for presidential candidates in general elections, but D.C. also has a policy that it won’t tally those write-ins. This year, these candidates filed the declaration: Chase Oliver, Jill Stein, Claudia De la Cruz, and Shiva Ayyadurai.

Joseph Bishop-Henchman, who lives in D.C., was irked that no write-in information was released by the Board of Elections, so he arranged to count them himself. Among candidates who were on the ballot in at least one state, he found these: Jill Stein 2,246; Claudia De la Cruz 609; Cornel West 461; Chase Oliver 202; Peter Sonski 128; Randall Terry 4.

He also tallied the votes for people who weren’t candidates. See his whole report at Independent Political Report.

South Carolina Independence Party Changes it Name to Forward Party

Posted on by January 18, 2025
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South Carolina lets qualified parties change their name. The Independence Party, which has been ballot-qualified for almost thirty years, recently changed its name to the Forward Party. Therefore, the Forward Party is now ballot-qualified in South Carolina, the fourth state in which it has gained that status. Thanks to Chris Powell for this news. The party is also on in Colorado, Florida, and Utah.

Sixth Circuit Says Lawsuit Over Ohio Statewide Initiative Process is Moot, Relative to Injunctive Relief

Posted on by December 29, 2024
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On November 21, 2024, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in Brown v Yost, 24-3354. The issue was the Ohio initiative process for statewide initiatives. The law requires a group to get approval from the Attorney General before beginning to circulate its petition. The Attorney General has the power to object to the summary of the initiative that would appear on the petition.

The Attorney General objected to six different versions of the summary for one particular proposed initiative, which wasted so much time that the proponents had to give up collecting the needed signatures. The proponents then filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the unlimited discretion given the Attorney General violates the First Amendment. The Sixth Circuit granted injunctive relief against the Attorney General on May 29, 2024. Then the state appealed to all the judges of the Sixth Circuit, and they agreed to re-hear the case. Then, on November 21, they said the matter of injunctive relief is moot. Here is that opinion.

The opinion agrees that the issue of declaratory relief is not moot. The opinion is unsigned. There are some dissents, both from some judges who support the May 2024 opinion, and some who not only oppose that opinion, but feel the declaratory judgment claim should also be denied.

December 2024 Ballot Access News Print Edition

Posted on by December 28, 2024
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DEMOCRATIC HOSTILITY TO ROBERT KENNEDY, JR. MAY HAVE COST KAMALA HARRIS THE PRESIDENCY

The popular vote in the November 5, 2024 presidential election was very close.  Donald Trump received 49.86% and Kamala Harris received 48.24%.  The margin between the two major candidates, 1.62%, is the smallest since 2000.

The result may have been reversed if Democratic officials had not made a effort to injure the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. candidacy, behavior which motivated him to quit the race.  Between Kennedy’s announcement in October 2023 that he would be an independent candidate and August 1, 2024, his poll numbers varied from 20% to 8%, according to The Hill’s compilation of presidential polls.  Kennedy declined in the polls during August, but he was still at 7% in the Pew Research Center poll released August 14.  Meanwhile, Kamala Harris led in 29 of the 37 polls released in August (see the Wikipedia page “Opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election”).  But then, on August 23, Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.  The hostility toward him from Democratic Party leaders had been huge:

  1. Democrats had attacked Kennedy’s ballot access in Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Texas.
  2. Democrats worked with CNN to set debate criteria for the June 27 debate that made it impossible for Kennedy to qualify for the debate. They did this by saying his ballot access had to be confirmed in states with at least a majority of the electoral college votes by June 20. This ignored the fact that states simply do not check signatures that early.

The debate rules should have allowed secondary evidence that would have predicted with a high degree of certainty that Kennedy would be on the ballot.  The rule was also discriminatory because at the time there was no certainty that the Democratic Party nominee would be President Joe Biden.

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