Three candidates are on the Missouri ballot for U.S. Senate: incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill, Republican nominee Todd Akin, and Libertarian nominee Jonathan Dine. Yet a recent Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Post-Dispatch and New 4 asks voters, “If the 2012 general election for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat were held today, would you vote for Claire McCaskill, the Democrat, or Todd Akin, the Republican?” See here. Scroll down.

The results of that poll, we are told, are: 50% for McCaskill, 41% for Akin. Presumably, 9% of the voters either said “I don’t know” or said they are voting for the Libertarian, or at least for someone else. One wonders why pollsters don’t present the actual list of candidates to respondents, especially when there are only three. An earlier Rasmussen Poll did present respondents with the choice of McCaskill, Akin, or “someone else” and that polled resulted in 9% voting for “someone else.” See here for Nate Silver’s discussion of that poll, written before the Post-Dispatch Poll results had been released. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link to the Mason-Dixon Poll.

Here is an interview with Jonathan Dine, conducted by Eric Dondero at LibertarianRepublican.

On August 24, a federal lawsuit was filed in Ohio over a recent directive of the Secretary of State that eliminated the weekend before the November election as a time when voters may vote. The case is Fair Elections Ohio v Husted, 12-cv-763, southern district. See this story.

A lawsuit filed a few weeks ago challenged Ohio practices that permitted some counties to have more early voting days and hours than other counties. The Secretary of State responded to that lawsuit by imposing uniform days and hours for early voting for all counties. But, when he did that, he eliminated the weekend before the election. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.

On August 24, backers of the initiative in Arizona for a top-two open primary filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that the petition does have enough valid signatures. See this story. UPDATE: opponents of the initiative have also filed a lawsuit, alleging that many of the signatures accepted by elections officials should be rejected, because they were collected by ex-felons. See this story.