The election of November 2, 2010, for Juvenile Court Judge in Hamilton County, Ohio, is still unresolved, and it is now more than one year since that election. The race between Tracie Hunter and John Williams was so close, the outcome depended on whether certain provisional ballots should be counted. The case has been in the Ohio Supreme Court, and all three levels of federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court (which refused to get involved). See this story, which says that Hamilton County, in the election of November 6, 2011, will try to make sure the same problems with provisional ballots do not arise this time.

The 2010 dispute is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals, 6th circuit. Certain voters cast provisional ballots and were directed by polling place officials to drop them off at the wrong end of the room. The room was the location of polling places for two different precincts, and some were deposited in the box for the wrong precinct.

According to this letter to the editor by Green Party activist Haryaksha Gregor Knauer, the Arizona Green Party will use its presidential primary. The letter says that Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay will appear on the Green Party presidential primary ballot. No one can formally file for any party’s presidential primary until the period December 20-January 9. The presidential primaries will be February 28.

In 1996, the Arizona Democratic Party and the Arizona Libertarian Party won a lawsuit in state court, saying if a party doesn’t want a presidential primary, the state must not hold one. It is likely that in 2012, the Democratic, Libertarian, and Americans Elect Parties will tell the Secretary of State not to hold presidential primaries for them.

Darryl W. Perry has recently published a book “Duopoly: How the Republicrats Control the Electoral Process”, which is available on Amazon. Normally this blog doesn’t carry book reviews, although the printed Ballot Access does. However, “Duopoly” is too useful not to be publicized in both places.

The book has five appendices, each containing valuable statistical data that is not easy to find elsewhere. Appendix One is especially useful. It is titled, “Congressional Re-election Rates for U.S. House of Representatives”. It covers the entire period 1789 to the present. It shows, for each regularly-scheduled election, the number of seats, the number of open seats, the number of members seeking re-election, the number being re-elected, and then shows percentages for each of the last two categories. At a glance, once can see that re-election rates have increased in the modern era, relative to the past when elections were less regulated. In 1874, only 58.3% of the incumbents who were running for re-election were re-elected. Other years in which re-election rates were below 70% were 1842, 1854, 1862, 1890, 1894, and 1932. By comparison, starting in 1950, there has never been an election with that percentage being lower than 85%.

The book also has re-election rates for the Canadian House of Commons, 1869 to the present, showing Canadian elections are much more likely to result in a high turnover. Canada has equal and tolerant ballot access laws for all candidates, unlike the U.S.

There is much, much more that is useful in this book, and a future paper edition of B.A.N. will review the book in more detail.