On December 12, Cathy Stewart, coordinator of the New York City Independence Party, issued this detailed explanation of how the party goes about finding members for its local committees in New York city. The response is fascinating because it shows how much work is involved in maintaining an active party in New York and other states in which party members in each precinct have the right to elect party officers. Probably no party, other than the Democrats and Republicans, has such an extensive list of elected party officers.

The leading activists of the New York city Independence Party do this hard work because it is the only way they can maintain control over the New York city Independence Party, given that the state Independence Party officers are hostile to the New York city officers. The state officers of the party would dearly love to take control of the city party, but they can’t because the city party activists out-organize them.

Control of the New York city party is important because it determines who can run in the party’s primaries for the three citywide partisan offices, especially Mayor. New York city holds such elections this year.

The only states that have not finished tabulating the vote for president, at least for candidates on the ballot, are California and West Virginia, but both expect to release final figures by the end of the day, December 14. West Virginia would have been finished earlier except that Marshall County’s final tally is still incomplete.

However, write-ins remain to be tallied in some states. For example, Massachusetts says it won’t have the write-in tallies for the declared write-in presidential candidates until mid-January.

Last month, Jill Stein received 714 write-ins in Kansas. This is the 2nd-highest number of write-ins ever cast for president in a Kansas general election. The only candidate who received more write-ins was Ralph Nader in 1996; he received 914.

Kansas did not permit write-ins for President before 1990.