The Star-Tribune, Minnesota’s largest newspaper, endorsed Instant Runoff Voting in this October 21 editorial. St. Paul voters are voting whether to use IRV on November 3, 2009. Thank to Rob Richie for the link.
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The Federal Election Commission has just released its book, “Federal Elections 2008”, which has election returns for President and Congress. There is no publication that takes greater pains to capture write-in votes. Even Congressional Quarterly’s “America Votes” doesn’t include, for example, the Rhode Island November 2008 presidential write-ins. Rhode Island is one of the states that doesn’t have a write-in declaration of write-in candidacy form, so the state tallies all write-ins. The book reveals that in Rhode Island, Hillary Clinton received 655 write-ins, and Ron Paul received 472 write-ins.
Copies of the book are free and are available from the FEC, phone 800-424-9530.
On October 20, U.S. District Court Judge Jerome Simandle, a Bush Sr. appointee, ruled that plaintiffs in Kerchner v Obama do not have standing to pursue their claim that President Obama does not meet the constitutional qualifications to be President. The decision is eleven pages long and says that the two plaintiffs, who are retired military officers, have no more stake in the matter than any citizen of the U.S. “The injury, if any, suffered by Plaintiffs is one that would be shared by all the American people.” The case is !;09-cv-253-JBS, and had been filed on January 20, 2009.
On October 21, the Virginia State Board of Elections voted to count the disputed 2,000 overseas ballots cast in the November 2008 election. A U.S. District Court earlier this month had ordered the Board to count them. They had not been counted previously because state law says they arrived too late, but the court ruling said the state should have mailed them out earlier.
It will be interesting to see how the results compare to the statewide vote as a whole. The results will show if overseas absentee ballots differ politically from regular Virginia voters.
It is still possible that the state will appeal the ruling to the 4th circuit. If the state has decided to appeal, it has not yet made this known to the public.
According to this story, a recent Fairleigh Dickinson University poll of the New Jersey gubernatorial race shows independent candidate Chris Daggett at 17%. Daggett does better in polls that ask about him by name, according to this poll, indicating he is gaining name recognition.