Oklahoma’s March 6 Democratic presidential primary ballot contained the names of five candidates. President Obama’s four opponents cumulatively polled 43% of the vote: Randall Terry 18.02%; Jim Rogers 13.79%; Darcy Richardson 6.39%; Bob Ely 4.72%.
Under Oklahoma Democratic Party rules, anyone who polls as much as 15% in the presidential primary is entitled to a delegate. Randall Terry’s entire presidential campaign is dedicated to the cause of making all abortion illegal.
Ohio held its primary for all office on March 6. It is the earliest congressional primary for any state, in 2012. Some Libertarian and Green Party congressional candidates were on their own party’s primary ballot for various U.S. House seats. Others had write-in campaigns in their own primaries, because they did not succeed in getting the needed signatures to appear on their own party’s primary ballots.
One Libertarian, Chris Kalla, did receive enough write-in votes in his primary to advance to the November election. He was running in the 4th U.S. House district. He needed 25, and the Secretary of State’s web page says he received 26.
However, the three minor party members seeking a U.S. Senate nomination did not receive enough votes for nomination. They needed 500 write-ins. Libertarian member John Fockler got 407 write-ins. Two Greens were also running for U.S. Senate as write-ins in the Green primary. Joseph DeMare got 191 and Anita Rios got 43. It is possible that not all ballots containing write-in votes have been counted yet, and also some provisional ballots haven’t been counted yet either, so there may be a slight chance that eventually Fockler will be credited with 500 write-ins.
Apparently, only 270,000 Virginia voters cast a vote in today’s presidential primary. Choices were limited to Ron Paul and Mitt Romney; write-ins weren’t allowed.
In 2008, the number of votes cast in Virginia presidential primaries was: Republican 489,252; Democratic 986,203.
In 2004, there was no Republican Virginia presidential primary.
In 2000, there were 664,093 votes cast in the Virginia Republican presidential primary.
According to this story, Arthur Jones, who is on the ballot in the Illinois Republican primary for Congress in the 3rd district, is a former National Socialist White People’s Party activist. That is one of the U.S. groups that generally have been considered adherents to Nazi doctrines.
The 3rd Illinois district is now represented by Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski. It covers part of Chicago and some of its Cook County suburbs. Jones is one of three Republicans on the primary ballot. The article says Jones would rather have run under another party name, but because it took 600 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot, versus 5,000 to run as an independent, he chose the Republican primary route.
On June 6, the Virginia legislature passed HB 736, which moves the non-presidential 2012 primary from June to August. That automatically moves the petition deadline for independent candidates for Congress and local office, and the nominees of unqualified parties for those offices, from June to August as well.
