On November 4, Indiana independent candidate Mark Smith was elected to the Montgomery County Council in district 3. Here is a link to the election returns. Click on the link that says, “2014 General Final Election Returns.” The results are: Mark Smith, independent, 1,229 votes; Gayle Lough, Republican, 1,183 votes.

Montgomery County is in west central Indiana. The largest town and county seat is Crawfordsville.

Independent candidates are very rare in Indiana. Indiana is one of only three states in which no independent candidate has ever appeared on the ballot for statewide office, other than president (the other two such states are North Carolina and New Mexico). Indiana greatly disadvantages independent candidates because it has a straight-ticket device. Independent candidates do not have their own straight-ticket device. Furthermore, independent candidates are put in the extreme far-right column, a column which has no logo. The party columns have a party logo.

The election was close, but not in the range in which a recount would normally be requested (the percentages work out to 51%-49%). Nevertheless, the local Republican Party has requested a recount. See this story.

The California Secretary of State’s “Statement of Votes” for November 2014 will be posted on her web page on Friday, December 12. Although the semi-official results are on the web page now, there is a lot of data that is not revealed in the semi-official results, especially regarding turnout and the number of blank ballots for certain races.

On December 5, U.S. District Court Judge James Teilborg declared Arizona’s definition of “political committee” to be unconstitutional because it is vague and overbroad. Galassini v Town of Fountain Hills, 2:11cv-2097. The case began in 2011 when Dina Galassini was threatened with prosecution bcause she had e-mailed a group of friends and suggested they hold a rally to oppose a bond measure, and she had not registered as a “political committee.”

After she sued, the legislature amended the law to provide that a “political committee” must have spent or raised $250. The town and the state then argued that because Galassini had not spent or raised that much, her lawsuit is moot. However, she still won a preliminary decision on September 30, 2013, because the law still left her in danger. As the 2013 decision explained, if any one of the people who attended her rally raised or spent $250, the entire group would be in danger of having failed to report as a “political committee.” Filing as a “political committee” involves choosing a chair and a treasurer (who must be separate people), and filing numerous campaign finance reports, and printing “paid for by (followed by the name of the committee)” on all the communications of the group.

After the 2013 decision, Galassini resolved her differences with the town government, but the new decision of December 5, 2014, still finds the state law unconstitutional. The opinion is especially critical of the state’s definition of “political committee”, which is contained in a single sentence that is 183 words long. The decision says that the definition is far too vague and confusing to be constitutional. Thanks to Dan Tokaji for this news.