Peter Shumlin will be the next Governor of Vermont. See this story. While he was a state legislator, he was a co-sponsor of the bill to establish Instant Runoff Voting for congressional races (S.108 in 2007), a bill that passed, but which was vetoed by then-Governor Jim Douglas. The new Vermont Secretary of State has also been a supporter of IRV.
According to Green Party Watch, three California Green Party members won important non-partisan elections. Gayle McLaughlin was re-elected Mayor of Richmond, California. Dan Hamburg (who was the Green Party’s gubernatorial nominee in California in 1998) was elected to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Bruce Delgado was re-elected Mayor of Marina, a city in Monterey County.
The write-in votes for state representative have not been counted yet in Gunnison County, Colorado. Gunnison County is the most populous county in Kathleen Curry’s district, and is her home county. Without Gunnison County’s votes, Curry is not winning. She is Colorado’s only independent legislator, and she was being forced to run for re-election as a write-in candidate. See this story about the vote-counting. Curry did carry Hinsdale County, the least populous of the five counties in the district.
The Marin County, California District Attorney dropped charges against Laura Wells. See this story. Wells was the Green Party gubernatorial nominee. She was arrested for trespassing for attempting to use a valid ticket to sit in the audience at one of the Jerry Brown-Meg Whitman gubernatorial debates.
The Independent American Party appears to have won four partisan races for county office in Nevada. The party re-elected the County Clerk/Recorder in Eureka County. It also elected the District Attorney of Esmerelda County, a County Commissioner in White Pine County, and the Public Administrator in Nye County. Thanks to Cody Quirk for this news. The Eureka County win was by only three votes, so that result is not yet certain.
