Three Minor Party Candidates on California November 2014 Ballot Poll Large Votes

Posted on by November 9, 2014
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Only three minor party members were on the California November 2014 ballot for partisan office. In each case, only one person had filed in the primary, and the three minor party members had then each filed to be a write-in candidate in the June primary. As the only candidates running in June against the single ballot-listed candidate, the three declared write-in candidates obviously placed second, and qualified for November.

In U.S. House district 44, in western Los Angeles County, Peace & Freedom candidate Adam Shbeita polled 13.0% against incumbent Democrat Janice Hahn.

In Assembly district 5, in the Sierra Nevada mountains east of the San Joaquin Valley, Libertarian Patrick Hogan polled 25.2% against incumbent Republican Frank Bigelow.

In Assembly district 79, in San Diego County, American Independent Party member George R. Williams polled 38.7% against incumbent Democrat Shirley Weber. This is the largest percentage of the vote any AIP member has ever received for a partisan office in a California general election.

Louisiana Judge Wins Re-Election but Won’t be Allowed to Serve Because he is Age 74

Posted on by November 9, 2014
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Louisiana has a mandatory retirement age for state judges; they can’t serve after they attain age 70. Voters defeated a measure to repeal that law on November 4. At the same time, voters in Orleans Parish re-elected Criminal Court Judge Frank Marullo, who is age 74. See this story.

State measure five, which would have repealed the retirement age, lost 42%-58%.

Matt Parker, Well-Known British/Australian Stand-up Comic, and Expert on Mathematics, Favors Ranked-Choice Voting

Posted on by November 8, 2014
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The Los Angeles Times has this op-ed by Matt Parker, who is originally from Australia and who is now a stand-up comedian in London, and a lecturer at the University of London on mathematics, and author of “Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension.” Here is his web page. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.

California 2014 Election Likely to be First Gubernatorial Election Ever with Less than 50% of Registered Voters Participating

Posted on by November 8, 2014
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Although California still has many uncounted ballots, it appears likely that only 8,000,000 persons voted in the November 4, 2014 election. If so, that would mean only 44.9% of the registered voters participated. California has never before had a gubernatorial general election with fewer than 50% of the registered voters voting.

Although it is true turnout was down in the November 2014 election in most states, California’s turnout appears to be the 12th worst of the 50 states. See this November 7 chart prepared by Political Science Professor Michael P. McDonald, giving his estimate of the number of voters in each state, divided by the number of persons who could have voted if they had registered or were registered.

As of November 8, fewer than 6,000,000 votes have been counted for California Governor, according to the Secretary of State’s web page.