On November 6, Frank Gilbert, Libertarian Party nominee for Constable of DeKalb Township in Grant County, was elected. He ran unopposed, but the office is a partisan office. Gilbert is a former Mayor of Tull, and has been active in the Libertarian Party for many decades.
On November 6, Pat Noble, who is 19 years old, was elected to the Red Bank Regional High School Board of Education. The high school is in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Noble defeated an incumbent, Nilsa Samol, by a margin of 53.6% to 46.4%. The high school is over a century old and is considered one of the state’s best high schools; see the wikipedia page about the school here.
Noble has been the Secretary of the New Jersey Socialist Party for several years.
The New York Times has this story about the odd circumstances by which a Green Party nominee was elected to the Arkansas State House yesterday.
On November 6, two incumbent members of the Ohio Supreme Court were ousted. One of the two winners is William O’Neill, who had run twice before but had never before won. He always refuses to accept campaign contributions. He has been an Appellate Court judge in the past, and in addition he works as a registered nurse in a pediatric emergency department. He is a proponent of public funding for candidates for State Supreme Court Justice. See this story.
Ohio has partisan elections for State Supreme Court Justice, although ballot labels are absent for that office on the general election ballot. O’Neill is a Democratic nominee.
In Illinois, if the nominee of an unqualified party polls at least 5%, the party becomes ballot-qualified for that office for the next election (except the rule doesn’t work in years which end in zero, such as 2010). This year, the Green Party polled over 5% in two Illinois districts, so the party is automatically on the ballot in 2014 for those two races. Nancy Wade polled 5.7% in the 5th district, and Paula Bradshaw polled 5.6% in the 12th district.
Other than these districts in Illinois, the Green Party does not seem to have gained status as a “party” in any state as a result of the 2012 election returns. It lost qualified status in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Utah.
The Libertarian Party lost qualified status in Arkansas, Hawaii, and North Dakota. Arkansas parties lose ballot status every two years if they don’t poll as much as 3% for the office at the top of the ballot (president in presidential years and governor in midterm years). The Libertarian Party lost ballot status in Hawaii because Hawaii has a very strange law that says, once a party has been on the ballot for three elections in a row, then it is on the ballot for the next five elections as well. The Libertarian Party has used up its five “free” elections and will now need to petition in 2014, 2016, and 2018 in order to get another “free” ten years. Or it could conceivably petition in 2014 and then meet the vote test, which is 2% for all the State Senate races, or 4% for all the State House races, of 10% for either U.S. House seat or a statewide office.
