Apparently, only 270,000 Virginia voters cast a vote in today’s presidential primary. Choices were limited to Ron Paul and Mitt Romney; write-ins weren’t allowed.
In 2008, the number of votes cast in Virginia presidential primaries was: Republican 489,252; Democratic 986,203.
In 2004, there was no Republican Virginia presidential primary.
In 2000, there were 664,093 votes cast in the Virginia Republican presidential primary.
According to this story, Arthur Jones, who is on the ballot in the Illinois Republican primary for Congress in the 3rd district, is a former National Socialist White People’s Party activist. That is one of the U.S. groups that generally have been considered adherents to Nazi doctrines.
The 3rd Illinois district is now represented by Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski. It covers part of Chicago and some of its Cook County suburbs. Jones is one of three Republicans on the primary ballot. The article says Jones would rather have run under another party name, but because it took 600 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot, versus 5,000 to run as an independent, he chose the Republican primary route.
On June 6, the Virginia legislature passed HB 736, which moves the non-presidential 2012 primary from June to August. That automatically moves the petition deadline for independent candidates for Congress and local office, and the nominees of unqualified parties for those offices, from June to August as well.
Joe Mathews, a California journalist and author, and one of the nation’s leading proponents of Proportional Representation, has this column in Fox & Hounds, suggesting to California Republicans that they advocate proportional representation. As he correctly notes, Republican candidates for California legislature, cumulatively, regularly poll a higher share of the statewide popular vote than the percentage of seats they win.
Fox & Hounds is a Republican-leaning blog about California politics. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
On March 6, Public Policy Polling released a poll showing these results for the November 2012 Maine U.S. Senate race: Independent Angus King 36%, Democrat Chellie Pingree 31%, Republican Charlie Summers 28%, undecided or other 5%.
On the evening of March 5, King said that he will be an independent candidate for U.S. Senate this year. The poll was taken prior to that announcement. The poll’s assumption of who the Republican and Democratic nominees will be is just a guess, because the primary won’t be until June.
Angus King was elected Governor of Maine as an independent in 1994, and re-elected easily as an independent in 1998.
