Four states still haven’t quite finished tabulating votes from the November 4, 2014 election. California will finish by close of business December 5. New York will finish by December 15. Ohio doesn’t know when it will be finished, but estimates in a week from today. Texas will be finished December 5. The last state to finish is Oregon, which posted its results on December 4.
Of course, in some states, recounts for particular offices are proceeding.
Tim Utz, the Constitution Party nominee for a Minnesota state legislative race, is paying $2,100 to have the votes recounted in his race, even though the original results show that he did not come close to winning. See this story. It is likely that Utz doesn’t really believe he might have won, but that he is testing the system. The recount may show that the original count was accurate, or conceivably it could show that it wasn’t accurate.
Alaska state law says that the Public Offices Commission, which regulates campaign finance, is to have five members. Four of them are chosen by the two parties that place first and second in the gubernatorial vote. Because Democrats didn’t have any gubernatorial nominee last month, the four commissioners appointed by the two “largest” parties will be chosen by the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party. See this story. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for the link.
On December 3, the Maine state legislature appointed a new State Treasurer. The legislature chose Terry Hayes, who is a registered independent. See this story. Thanks to Thomas MacMillan for the link.
Virginia held two elections for U.S. House, 7th district, on November 4, 2014. One was for the regular two-year term and the other was for the short term running from November 2014 to early January 2015. The need for the short term special election was because the seat was vacant, because Congressman Eric Cantor had resigned earlier this year, before his term was up.
The Democratic and Republican nominees for both November 2014 elections were the same two individuals. But the regular election had a Libertarian on the ballot, whereas the special election only had the two major party nominees.
The vote in the regular election was: Republican Dave Brat, 148,026; Democrat John K. Trammell, 89,914; Libertarian James A. Carr, 5,086; miscellaneous write-ins 325.
The vote in the special election was: Brat 148,841; Trammell 91,236; miscellaneous write-ins 1,236.
Because the two major party nominees were the same individuals in both races, this juxtaposition of two elections gives evidence of how most voters who vote Libertarian (at least in this part of Virginia) would vote, if no Libertarian were on the ballot. It appears that probably 26% of Carr’s voters voted Democratic in the special election which didn’t list Carr; 16% voted Republican; and the other 58% of Carr’s voters either cast a write-in vote, or chose not to vote in the special election. Here is a link to the Virginia State Board of Elections’ web page showing election returns.
