Minor parties appeared on the presidential ballot in a few states last month, even though they submitted no presidential elector candidates. The Libertarian Parties of Nevada and West Virginia didn’t submit any presidential elector candidates. The Green Parties of Oregon and West Virginia didn’t submit any, either.

When a party submits no presidential elector candidates, it is admitting that it is certain it won’t carry that state, because if it believed it had even one chance in a trillion to win the election in that state, if it did win and yet had no presidential electors, the victory would have been utterly wasted.

The election returns are still disputed in one Ohio legislative race. The original count, for State House, 98th district, showed Al Landis, the Republican nominee, defeating Joshua O’Farrell, the Democratic nominee, by 14 votes. After a recount the margin was 8 votes. O’Farrell has asked the State Supreme Court to rule that the results are invalid. His brief identifies many areas of dispute. One example is that one of the two counties in the district accepted absentee ballots in which the voter left the “birthdate” question blank, but rejected absentee ballots when the voter absent-mindedly put “2012” as his or her year of birth, instead of the actual year of birth. See the brief here. Thanks to Moritz Election Law for the link. The case in the Ohio Supreme Court is O’Farrell v Landis, 12-2151, filed December 24, 2012.

The National Archives & Records Administration web page is posting copies of the 2012 Certificates of Ascertainment received from each state. This is a document that tells the total number of valid votes received by each candidate for presidential elector. The web page is also posting copies of each state’s electoral college vote, as the states submit them. See here.

The District of Columbia’s Certificate of Ascertainment appears faulty. It asserts that the only qualified presidential elector candidates were those pledged to President Obama, Mitt Romney, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein. Actually, there were also three legally-qualified presidential elector candidates in D.C. pledged to Rocky Anderson, but the Certificate does not list them. Anderson was a declared write-in candidate in D.C.