Major Parties Fail to Nominate Candidates in Almost 40% of State Legislative Races

Posted on by October 25, 2012
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This year, 43 states are holding regularly-scheduled state legislative elections. There are 5,984 seats up. Democrats have 4,720 nominees, and Republicans have 4,859 nominees. In Washington and California, candidates with a major party label are assumed to be “nominees”, and in seats in which two Democrats are the only candidates on the ballot, the Democratic Party is given credit for one “nominee”; the same rule applies to Republicans, of course.

Because Democrats are lacking a nominee for 1,264 seats, and because Republicans are lacking a nominee for 1,125 seats, that makes 2,389 seats with no Republican-Democratic contest. Ballot Access News has been tracking this data starting in 1992, and never before has the proportion of no-major party-contest seats been so high. 2,389 works out to 39.9% of all the seats.

States in which the Democratic Party doesn’t have nominees for even half the seats are Georgia, South Carolina, and Wyoming. States in which the Republican Party doesn’t have nominees for even half the seats are Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

A Substantial Number of Votes May Not be Counted Until Mid-November

Posted on by October 25, 2012
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This article points out that Ohio is expected to have more provisional ballots cast this year than any state except California. It always takes any state weeks to count provisional ballots. Provisional ballots can’t be tallied until election administrators first determine whether the provisional ballot is valid, and that is time-consuming. Vote-counting is always slow to be completed in California, Washington, and Oregon, but the story emphasizes that it will also be slow in Ohio this year. Ohio’s slow count is more newsworthy because polls show that Ohio is very close, whereas the other slow states all considered safe for President Obama. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

Oregon Voters Pamphlet Contains Statements About Five Minor Parties, but None for the Republican and Democratic Parties

Posted on by October 25, 2012
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Oregon is one of the states that mails a Voter Pamphlet to each registered voter. The Oregon pamphlet includes a page for each party to explain its principles. However, this year, according to this story, the Democratic and Republican Parties failed to submit such a statement, so they are omitted from this part of the Pamphlet. Each of the five qualified minor parties did submit a statement.

Here is a link to the Table of Contents for the Voters Pamphlet. Click on the link for any particular party listed to read that party’s statement.

San Diego City Ballots Accidentally Show Write-in Space for Mayoral Run-off

Posted on by October 24, 2012
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According to this article, the November 2012 ballots for city office in San Diego accidentally include write-in space. The city eliminated write-ins in municipal run-offs approximately five years ago. But a ballot printing error causes write-in space to appear on this year’s ballot. The city is electing a Mayor. Thanks to Jack Dean for the link.

PBS News Hour Gives Five Minutes of Coverage to Free & Equal Presidential Debate

Posted on by October 24, 2012
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On October 24, the Public Broadcasting Service News Hour contained a 5-minute and 30 second segment about the October 23 presidential debate between Rocky Anderson, Virgil Goode, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein. Here is a link to the News Hour web page, although it may be a few hours before tonight’s segment is posted. Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.

UPDATE: here is a link to the David Letterman show, which showed a few seconds for each of the four candidates. Here is an editorial in the Daily Reveille, student newspaper at Louisiana State University, praising the candidates for airing issues not mentioned by the two major party candidates. Thanks to Kimberly Wilder for the Letterman link.