Last month, Claudia De la Cruz qualified to have her votes officially tallied in 36 states. She was the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.This is the highest number of states that have tallied votes for the presidential nominee of a Marxist party since 1932, when William Z. Foster of the Communist Party received an official tally in 39 states.

Furthermore, De la Cruz would have three more jurisdictions, except that Maine, North Dakota, and the District of Columbia refuse to tally write-in votes even for presidential candidates who filed a write-in declaration of candidacy. De la Cruz did the paperwork in all three places, but no one will ever know how many people voted for her.

There has been little litigation around whether states must tally write-in votes for candidates who file a declaration of write-in candidacy. The Libertarian Party lost on this issue in 2010, involving the District of Columbia.

The other states in which there will be no tally for De la Cruz are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, although it is possible Pennsylvania will count her votes. These states either don’t allow write-ins for president, or they don’t have a declaration procedure and they customarily don’t count write-ins even though they permit them. And in Georgia, De la Cruz was removed from the ballot after the deadline for filing for write-in status.

Last month, Chad Williams, the Libertarian nominee for Corporation Commission, received 7.43% of the vote in a race against the Republican and Democratic nominees. His vote total was 114,257.

It is common for minor party candidates for offices like that to receive high percentages of the vote in two-person races. But if one only looks at statewide races with both a Republican and a Democrat in the race, such percentages are rare. Williams’ percentage was the highest for a minor party candidate for a statewide state office in Oklahoma (with both major parties in the race) since 1924, when the Farmer-Labor Party nominee for that same office polled 8.48%.

See this news story about the 2024 race. Williams is a recent former city councilmember.

On December 20, Aaron Starr and his organization won a lawsuit against the city of Oxnard’s limits on campaign contributions for city council candidates. Moving Oxnard Forward v Ascension, 21-56295. Here is the 2-1 decision, which was written by Judge Daniel P. Collins, a Trump appointee. The decision is also signed by visiting U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Joseph Murphy, a Bush Jr. appointee. The dissent is by Judge Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee.

The majority included in the opinion the evidence that the City Council put the campaign finance limits on the ballot (the voters passed it) just to stop Aaron Starr. It mentions that the city’s website, describing the measure, even put up references to Starr.

Starr was elected to the city council last month. He has been a California Libertarian Party activist for many years.