I have divided the United States into five regions, and calculated the percentage of the vote that each minor party and independent candidate received in each region, in the states where he or she was on the ballot.

The five regions are: East, South, Midwest, West, and Border. “Border” means the areas that had slavery but did not secede: Delaware, D.C., Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. My division of the nation, using five regions, avoids the ambiguity of which region to put those states. For example, Oklahoma…is it a southern state or a midwestern state? Creating a “border” region is one way to handle the question.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. got .98% of the vote in the states in which he was on the ballot. However, he was only on the ballot before 50.1% of the voters. His regional percentages: West 1.29%; Border .95%; Midwest .88%; East .62%; South .60%.

Jill Stein got .64% of the vote in states in which voters could vote for her without having to cast a write-in. These states had 80.0% of the electorate. Her regional percentages: West .86%; East .70%; Border .68%; Midwest .57%; South .50%.

Chase Oliver got .47% of the vote where he was on the ballot, which included 88.8% of the nation. His regional percentages: Border .55%; West .52%; Midwest .49%; East .43%; South .42%.

Claudia De la Cruz got .23% of the vote where she was on the ballot, which included 42.0% of the nation. Her regional percentages: West .38%; East .24%; South .12%; Midwest .08%; and in the Border region she wasn’t on the ballot anywhere.

Cornel West got .18% of the vote were he was on the ballot, which was 26.2% of the nation. His regional percentages: East .38%; South .21%; West .19%; Midwest .12%; and in the Border region he wasn’t on the ballot anywhere.

Randall Terry got .10% of the vote where he was on the ballot, which was 27.4% of the nation. His regional percentages: Midwest .12%; West .11%; South .09%; East .07%; and in the Border region he wasn’t on anywhere.

I only did this analysis for candidates who were on the ballot before at least 25% of the electorate. None of the other candidates were on in more than seven states.

On December 12, three U.S. Senators introduced SJRes 121, a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college. One of the sponsors, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Il.) is chair of the Judiciary Committee, although he won’t be chair in the new congress. Here is the Committee’s press release about the amendment.

Here is the text. The other co-sponsors are Peter Welch of Vermont and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.

Last month, Claudia De la Cruz qualified to have her votes officially tallied in 36 states. She was the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.This is the highest number of states that have tallied votes for the presidential nominee of a Marxist party since 1932, when William Z. Foster of the Communist Party received an official tally in 39 states.

Furthermore, De la Cruz would have three more jurisdictions, except that Maine, North Dakota, and the District of Columbia refuse to tally write-in votes even for presidential candidates who filed a write-in declaration of candidacy. De la Cruz did the paperwork in all three places, but no one will ever know how many people voted for her.

There has been little litigation around whether states must tally write-in votes for candidates who file a declaration of write-in candidacy. The Libertarian Party lost on this issue in 2010, involving the District of Columbia.

The other states in which there will be no tally for De la Cruz are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, although it is possible Pennsylvania will count her votes. These states either don’t allow write-ins for president, or they don’t have a declaration procedure and they customarily don’t count write-ins even though they permit them. And in Georgia, De la Cruz was removed from the ballot after the deadline for filing for write-in status.