The Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, ever since 1920, has published a booklet after each congressional election, showing the number of votes cast for each candidate for federal office in that particular election. When the election is a presidential election, the title of the booklet is “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of (insert date).” When the election is just a congressional election, the title is “Statistics of the Congressional Election of (insert date).”

The people who prepare this book also prepare charts at the end of the book, giving the vote for each party for each of the three types of election (president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House).

Unfortunately, the people who prepare the book have a long-standing prejudice against minor parties. The columns in the summary charts are supposedly strictly according to party label, but this principle is not applied with uniformity. The Green Party has a slightly different name in some states. In Oregon, it is the Pacific Green Party; in Maine it is the Green Independent Party. Therefore, the charts in the back of the book don’t show Jill Stein’s votes in the “Green Party” column; it puts her votes into the “other” column. And, the vote total at the bottom of the “Green Party” column therefore doesn’t include Stein’s votes from Maine and Oregon.

But, the Democratic Party also has a slightly different name in two states. In North Dakota it appears on the ballot as “Democratic-NPL Party.” In Minnesota, it appears as “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.” If the booklet were consistent, it would not put President Obama’s vote in the “Democratic” column; it would put his votes in the “other” column. But the booklet does not do that; it lists Obama’s votes from those two states in the “Democratic” column. This inconsistent application of the rules are not a new feature with the 2012 booklet; booklets for past elections have the same flaw.

There also some factual inaccuracies in the 2012 book, which will be detailed in a longer article in the August 1, 2013 print issue of Ballot Access News.

On July 11, a Michigan State Appeals Court agreed with the trial court that D. Etta Wilcoxon should be on the August 2013 ballot as a candidate for City Clerk of Detroit. The election is non-partisan. Wilcoxon needed 500 valid signatures. She was told she didn’t have enough. She attempted to demonstrate that she did have enough, but apparently was not permitted to do the necessary double-checking. See this story. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.

Some months ago, it was reported here that the Ohio Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill repeals the Ohio ban on out-of-state circulators. That bill, SB 47, unfortunately was amended before it passed, so that now all it does is repeal the out-of-state circulator ban for independent presidential petitions. The bill was signed March 22.

The Ohio ban on out-of-state circulators was struck down in Nader v Blackwell, 545 F.3d 459 (2008). Apparently the legislature believes that because Nader was an independent presidential candidate, therefore his court victory only applies to independent presidential petitions, and not other petitions. But there is nothing in the decision itself to bolster that belief. Judge Clay’s concurrence says, “Our decision that portions of sec. 3503.06 are unconstitutional as applied to Ralph Nader has the same practical effect as a declaration that the portions of 3503.06 which Nader challenges are facially unconstitutional.”