On November 15, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) introduced S3635, which provides incentives to states to solve the problem that in many places, voters had to stand in line at the polls for hours. See this Roll Call story. The text of the bill is not yet posted to the web page for the Library of Congress. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The lawsuit Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County v Bowen, 11-55316, will be decided by the Ninth Circuit, probably in the next few months. The issue is the California law that requires petition circulators to live in the district of the candidate whose petition they are circulating. The state acknowledges that the law is unconstitutional, but says the plaintiffs don’t have standing. On August 21, 2012, the Ninth Circuit had sent this case to mediation, but mediation has failed, so the case returns to the Ninth Circuit.
During 2012, the following three presidential candidates received primary season matching funds: Buddy Roemer $351,961; Jill Stein $333,331; Gary Johnson $308,235.
At least two states, Georgia and Wyoming, have released their official election returns for President (although Georgia hasn’t released write-in totals). A few other states have election web pages that continuously update, as more votes are counted; these states seem to be Alaska, Arizona, California, and Washington. Wyoming says there are 2,035 presidential write-ins, but the state web page doesn’t break them down.
When one combines the election night totals from the states not mentioned above with the totals for the states that are mentioned above, these are the minor party and independent presidential national vote totals so far:
Libertarian, Gary Johnson, 1,213,306
Green, Jill Stein, 432,296
Constitution, Virgil Goode, 118,551
Peace & Freedom, Roseanne Barr, 56,349
Justice, Rocky Anderson, 38,889
America’s Independent Party, Tom Hoefling, 33,509
independent Randall Terry, 12,986
independent Richard Duncan, 12,148
Party for Socialism and Liberation, Peta Lindsay and her stand-in, 9,138
Reform (three different presidential candidates together) 6,525
Will Christensen, Oregon Constitution Party, 4,283
Objectivist, Tom Stevens, 4,066
Socialist, Stewart Alexander, 3,946
Socialist Workers, James Harris, 3,868
Grassroots, Jim Carlson, 3,172
American Third Position, Merlin Miller, 2,833
We the People, Samm Tittle, 2,504
Twelve Visions, Jill Reed, 2,394
independent Jerry Litzel, 1,196
Socialist Equality, Jerry White, 1,130
Constitutional Government, Dean Morstad, 1,106
NSA Did 911, Jeff Boss, 907
Prohibition, Jack Fellure, 519
The Politico election returns web page, as of November 15, says that President Obama has 62,611,250 votes, and Mitt Romney has 59,134,475. Staff at Politico seem to be updating their totals as some states release new figures, and yet no one at that web page, as of November 15, has updated their totals to take account of the new, official figures from Georgia and Wyoming.
Among the parties that were on the ballot for president in both 2008 and 2012, the only ones that polled more votes in 2012 than in 2008 are the Republican, Libertarian, Green, Socialism & Liberation, Reform, and Objectivist Parties. Among those, the Libertarian, Socialism & Liberation, and Objectivist Parties polled their highest presidential vote totals ever, and it is very likely the Republican Party did as well, but that won’t be known for sure until all the votes are counted.
Current percentages are: Obama 50.61%, Romney 47.80%, all others 1.59% (of which Gary Johnson has .98%). In 2008, percentages were: Obama 52.93%, John McCain 45.65%, all others 1.42%.
Megan Rilkoff has this story about the beneficial uses of write-in space on ballots, with two interesting examples from last week’s election. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
