On January 9, the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, unanimously ruled in favor of Democratic nominee Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, in the election contest over who won the election for State Senate, 46th district, a district near Albany.

The Republican nominee, George A. Amedore, won the race by 37 votes, but 99 votes were never counted because of procedural errors made by local election officials. The January 9 court ruling said the 99 uncounted votes should be counted. It is still somewhat statistically unlikely that counting 99 more votes will erase a margin of 37 votes, of course. See this story. Both the Republican Judges and the Democratic Judges ruled in favor of counting the disputed ballots.

The original returns, by party, are: Democratic 55,408, Working Families 5,809, Green 1,387. All these votes were cast for Tkaczyk. Votes for Amedore came from these party lines: Republican 51,273, Conservative 8,274, Independence 3,594. It is very rare for the Green Party to ever cross-endorse a major party nominee, but in this case the Green Party did cross-endorse the Democrat.

On December 31, the Pennsylvania Libertarian statewide candidates asked the Commonwealth Court to award $35,500 in court costs. See this nine-page brief, which says that the attorneys for the challengers did nothing wrong, but that other agents of the challengers did unfair actions. The filing discusses the incident in which someone who held himself out as a law enforcement official made allegedly improper communications with some of the circulators.

On January 8, California held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat, 4th district. All precincts have reported, although not all provisional and absentee ballots have been counted. So far, the vote total is: Republican Jim Nielsen 87,669; Democrat Michael Harrington 43,866. No one else appeared on the ballot, and write-ins are not allowed. Those two vote totals add up to only 131,535. Yet the district had 532,036 registered voters as of the late October 2012 tally.

Poor turnout is normal for special elections held in isolation from other important elections.