The Whig Party, a new party with a special concern for the problems of veterans, had a candidate on the New Jersey ballot last week for Assembly, 14th district. The candidate, Gene Baldassari, polled 1.22% of the vote, according to unofficial returns.
The unofficial vote totals for each candidate for New Jersey Governor from last week’s election are:
Republican (Chris Christie) 1,004,219
Democratic (Jon Corzine) 962,130
independent (Chris Daggett) 120,821
Libertarian (Ken Kaplan) 4,246
Socialist (Greg Pason) 1,908
Other independents: Gary Steele 2,798; Jason Cullen 2,593; Kostas Petris 2,397; David Meiswinkle 2,242; Gary Stein 1,513; Joshua Leinsdorf 919; Alvin Lindsay 695.
Burlington County reported 108 write-ins for Governor. Generally, New Jersey counties don’t bother to mention how many write-in votes were received, much less reveal who received those write-ins. The Burlington County report is unusual. The only known write-in candidate who campaigned was Angela Lariscy, the Socialist Workers Party candidate.
Monmouth County hasn’t reported any tentative totals yet, so when its vote is available, all these totals will be larger.
According to this news story, Hawaii’s Elections Chief plans to ask the federal government for a waiver (for 2010 only) of the new federal law that requires states to mail foreign absentee ballots at least 45 days before an election. Hawaii has the latest Congressional primary in the nation, and it is obvious that Hawaii can’t mail out its foreign absentee ballots in 2010 at least 45 days before the general election, unless it moves that primary to an earlier date.
Hawaii requires new political parties to submit their petitions at least 5 months before the primary, so an earlier primary in Hawaii will automatically mean an earlier deadline for parties to qualify themselves. However, a good case can be made that Hawaii has no strong interest in requiring such petitions so far in advance of the primary. Hawaii is one of the states that requires newly-qualifying parties to nominate by primary. The state is free to let newly-qualifying parties nominate by convention, as most states do. Alternatively, even if Hawaii wants to continue requiring newly-qualifying parties to nominate by primary, it really isn’t necessary to put the petition deadline five months before that primary. No other state except California requires so much lead time.
The Illinois 8th U.S. House district is one of the more closely balanced congressional districts in the nation. In 2004 it switched from the Republicans to the Democrats, when Melissa Bean defeated long-time incumbent Philip Crane. Bean has been re-elected ever since. In 2006, Bill Scheurer formed the Moderate Party and eventually qualified as that party’s candidate for the 8th district after a long legal struggle. See this account from 2006, in which he sued the Democratic Party after the evidence showed that Democrats had tricked him into hiring a paid petitioning company that was secretly planning to sabotage his petition campaign.
For 2010, Scheurer has been planning to run again as a Green Party nominee. However, a challenge has now been filed against his petition to obtain a place on the Green Party primary ballot. Green Party activists support his candidacy, and he is the only Green attempting to run in that district. See this story.
The November 9 edition of Ballot Box has this interesting analysis of the Virginia elections of 2009 and 2005 and how the eventual outcome depended partly on a random drawing. The random drawing is held in Virginia to determine which political parties are listed first on general election ballots. The November 9 article is by Josh Goodman. The November 9 essay depends on an earlier analysis by political scientist Larry Sabato, written on August 13, 2009. A link to the earlier Sabato article is within the Goodman piece. Thanks to Peter Gemma for the link.
