Michigan Legislature Adjourns Without Passing Several Election Law Bills

The Michigan legislature adjourned on December 19. Several election law bills that had advanced quite far did not pass.

HB 5791 would have allowed primary candidates for Congress to get on a primary ballot with a filing fee instead of a petition. The U.S. Senate fee would have been $5,000. The U.S. House petition would have been $1,000. If the bill had passed, it would have had no impact on the state’s various qualified minor parties, which nominate by convention.

SB 1108 would have banned paying a petition circulator on a per signature basis. The bill would have included initiative petitions, primary candidate petitions, and petitions for an independent candidate.

SB 1109 would have required circulators of initiative petitions to read a summary of the measure before asking anyone to sign.

One bill that did pass is HB 5576. It allows the Secretary of State to use a random sample procedure to determine if a petition for a new party has enough valid signatures.

Republicans Did Better in Popular Vote for U.S. House in 2024 That Any Year Since 2014

The national popular vote for U.S. House in 2024 shows that Republicans polled 3,692,650 more votes than Democrats did. The Republican margin over the Democrats is the largest since 2014. Ironically the Republicans lost one seat in the U.S. House. The tally is 220 Republicans and 215 Democrats.

The presidential margin between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was 2,284,338. Therefore, the Republicans enjoyed a greater margin over Democrats for the House than they did for the presidency.

Ballot Access News does not merge the Working Families Party votes that are cast for Democrats for U.S. House into the Democratic total. Similarly, it does not merge the Conservative Party votes cast for Republicans for U.S. House into the Republican total. There are other news sources that take a different approach, so their totals vary somewhat from the BAN figures.

Republicans for the U.S. House got a slight majority of the vote, 50.29%. The “other” vote for U.S. House (independents, minro parties) was 1.91%.

Constitution Party Polled More Votes for U.S. House This Year Than Ever Before

Last month, Constitution Party nominees for U.S. House received 225,303 votes. This is the highest the party has ever received for U.S. House in its entire history.

The only previous year that was close was 2010. If the 2010 American Independent Party vote for U.S. House were included in the Constitution Party’s total, 2010 would have been better. But the American Independent Party ceased being part of the Constitution Party in 2008.

Election Returns Show Kennedy Received Highest Support in Areas Where Trump was Popular, With the Exception of Native American-majority Counties

An analysis of the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr vote shows that he received his highest percentages in counties that were more pro-Trump than that state as a whole. However, he also received his very highest support in counties with a Native American majority, and those counties were more pro-Harris, so the two factors must be weighed together to determine if his presence in the race helped either Trump or Harris.

Kennedy has long been intensely interested in Native American welfare, and Native Americans have long admired him for that. When Kennedy announced his vice-presidential nominee in Oakland, California, Native American speakers and performers were an important part of the meeting.

In the 22 counties with a Native American majority, and in which Kennedy was on the ballot, he received 2.49% of the total vote. This contrasts the the nation as a whole, in which he only received .98% of the vote in the states where he was on the ballot.

A large majority of the Native American vote went for Harris, despite some early news reports that reported the opposite. See this analysis from the Brookings Institution.

Setting aside the relatively small number of Native American-majority counties, one sees that in a large majority of states in which Kennedy was on the ballot, his best county in that state was a county that was more pro-Trump than that state as a whole. This tends to show that Kennedy’s support came at the expense of Trump.

Kennedy was on the ballot in 30 states. In four of them his best county was a Native American-majority county (Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota). Setting those aside, one finds that in 21 states Kennedy’s strongest county was a county that was more pro-Trump than that state as a hole. In only five states was the best Kennedy county a county that was more pro-Harris than that state as a whole. Those five states were Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Mississippi, and Rhode Island.

Alaska has no counties, so this analysis substitute state representative districts for Alaska. Kennedy’s best “county” was Alaska’s 38th State House District, which could be named “Bethel”, and where Kennedy got 5.58% of the vote.