On November 6, a U.S. District Court in Washington state struck down the state’s limit on how much an individual may donate to a campaign that is attempting to recall an elected official. See this post at RecallElections blog for more details. The case is Farris v Seabrook, 3:11-cv-5431.
As noted earlier, Robert Raymond, a Wisconsin resident, sued several California counties in August 2012 over the state ban on letting out-of-state residents circulate petitions in California. That case is in U.S. District Court in Sacramento and is Raymond v Johnson, 2:12-cv-2217.
On October 24, the counties filed a motion, asking the court to force the Secretary of State and the Attorney General to be added as defendants, even though those state officers do not want to be added as defendants. The counties want the state officials to do the work of defending the state law. The plaintiff argues that it is the counties that enforce the law, and make the decision on whether to prosecute out-of-state circulators, so the counties alone are the proper defendants. The court will hear the matter of whether the state officials should be brought into the case on February 25, 2013.
Of course, it would be much simpler if the California legislature would repeal the ban on out-of-state circulators.
Michael Grynbaum, the author of this New York Times story, examined the precinct election returns for President in New York city, and fills the story with fascinating nuggets of information. The second half of the story mentions one precinct in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, in which Jill Stein received 20 votes and Mitt Romney received zero. The story also mentions that Romney received 90% of the votes in several precincts populated largely by Orthodox Jews, and even received 100% of the votes in a few such precincts.. And it mentions that the Manhattan precinct containing Trump Tower tied between Romney and Obama.
On November 21, Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., resigned, only 15 days after he had been re-elected from the Illinois 2nd district in Chicago. See this story, which says that under Illinois law, taxpayers will spend $5,000,000 administering a special primary and a special election. The law requires the special election no later than March 21.
The November 6 election had three candidates on the ballot. Besides Jackson, there was a Republican and an independent, Marcus Lewis. The story linked above says Lewis plans to run in the special election. Assuming he wants to run as an independent in the special election, he will need a petition signed by 5% of the vote cast in the November 2012 election. That will be at least 14,336 valid signatures, a very severe burden. He only needed 5,000 valid signatures to qualify for the November 2012 election, because the 5% formula is not in effect for U.S. House elections in the year after redistricting.
Several writers and commentators have written or stated that President Obama is the first President in history to be re-elected with a smaller share of the popular vote and/or a smaller share of the electoral vote than he had received in his initial election. Different individuals have expressed this in slightly different ways. Sometimes their statements are false and other times they are technically true but very misleading.
In 1808, James Madison won his first term with 66.2% of the popular vote. The vote was Madison 95,643; Charles C. Pinckney 45,376; James Monroe 3,450.
But in 1812, Madison was re-elected with only 51.3% of the popular vote. He received 116,973; DeWitt Clinton received 106,513; Rufus King received 4,650. If the Electoral College had remained the same size in 1812 as it had been in 1808, then Madison would have received fewer electoral votes in 1812 than in 1808. However, the Electoral College grew between those two years, from 175 members in 1808 to 217 members in 1812, so even though Madison’s share of the electoral vote slipped, his number of electoral votes increased.
Also, in 1912, Woodrow Wilson won more electoral votes for his initial election than he won when he ran for re-election in 1916. He received 435 electoral votes in 1912 but only 277 in 1916.
