On December 28, 2012, President Obama signed the Hatch Act Modernization Act into law. S2170 permits most local and state government employees to run for partisan office, even if part of their salary or other compensation is subsidized by federal funds. The act also treats employees of the District of Columbia as local employees, rather than federal employees, for purposes of the Hatch Act.

The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, prohibits federal employees from running for partisan office, and until this bill was signed, also prohibited certain local and state employees from running for partisan office as well.

Minor parties appeared on the presidential ballot in a few states last month, even though they submitted no presidential elector candidates. The Libertarian Parties of Nevada and West Virginia didn’t submit any presidential elector candidates. The Green Parties of Oregon and West Virginia didn’t submit any, either.

When a party submits no presidential elector candidates, it is admitting that it is certain it won’t carry that state, because if it believed it had even one chance in a trillion to win the election in that state, if it did win and yet had no presidential electors, the victory would have been utterly wasted.

The election returns are still disputed in one Ohio legislative race. The original count, for State House, 98th district, showed Al Landis, the Republican nominee, defeating Joshua O’Farrell, the Democratic nominee, by 14 votes. After a recount the margin was 8 votes. O’Farrell has asked the State Supreme Court to rule that the results are invalid. His brief identifies many areas of dispute. One example is that one of the two counties in the district accepted absentee ballots in which the voter left the “birthdate” question blank, but rejected absentee ballots when the voter absent-mindedly put “2012” as his or her year of birth, instead of the actual year of birth. See the brief here. Thanks to Moritz Election Law for the link. The case in the Ohio Supreme Court is O’Farrell v Landis, 12-2151, filed December 24, 2012.