On May 1, Public Policy Polling released this poll for the presidential election in Virginia. When Virgil Goode, Constitution Party nominee, is included, the results are: President Obama 50%, Mitt Romney 38%, Virgil Goode 5%, other or undecided 7%. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
On May 1, the American Civil Liberties Union and many other public interest groups filed a lawsuit on behalf of some Pennsylvania voters who do not possess government-photo ID cards. See this press release, which has links to the complaint and details about the individual voter plaintiffs.
Most of the recently passed state photo-ID laws from southern states have been blocked this year by the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department. But most states are not covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, so whether these laws may go into effect depends on the outcome of state court lawsuits, such as this one. So far the Wisconsin photo-ID law passed this year has been blocked by state courts in Wisconsin. The new Pennsylvania case is called Applewhite v Commonwealth.
Mark Schmitt, writing for The New Republic, comments here on Americans Elect, and then goes on to recommend Instant-Runoff Voting in presidential general elections. He also recommends that states permit fusion (i.e., letting two parties jointly nominate the same candidate).
Schmitt says only five states permit fusion, although he does not name them. Actually more states than that permit fusion. They are Connecticut, Idaho, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont; and Pennsylvania permits it for certain partisan offices. In Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, fusion only can be accomplished via write-in votes in primaries.
But Schmitt also understates the number of states that permit fusion for President. Approximately half the states permit fusion for president. This is because so many state anti-fusion laws are worded to only apply to candidates nominated in direct primaries. But presidential elector candidates are not nominated by primary in any state; generally presidential elector candidates are nominated in state conventions.
On April 27, the South Carolina Election Commission determined that Americans Elect has enough valid signatures on its petition, and it is now a ballot-qualified party. The state requires 10,000 signatures. Americans Elect can remain ballot-qualified in South Carolina as long as it continues to run at least one candidate every four years.
The District of Columbia Board of Elections has released all the write-in tallies for the April 3, 2012 Green Party presidential primary. It had already been known that Jill Stein won that primary, because Stein was the only name on that ballot, and her total (previously released) is 216, whereas all write-ins put together total only 164.
The Board’s breakdown shows that Roseanne Barr and President Obama each received 72 write-ins. No one else received more than 2 write-ins.
The Board says it does not intend to put these results on its web page, so historians of the future will probably overlook these returns. The Board does not publish any book that contains official election returns, so the only official evidence will be a piece of paper in the Board’s files.
