Some bills in the U.S. House of Representatives have gained co-sponsors in the last nine days. HR 1826, for public funding of Congressional candidates, has gained 7, and now has 77. HR 2894, the Rush Holt bill on vote-counting machines, has gained 4 and now has 87. HR 3025, to require states to use bipartisan commissions to draw U.S. House boundaries, has gained one and now has 22.
On August 7, the Libertarian Party will file a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Board of Elections, over the Board’s refusal to count write-ins for Bob Barr for president in November 2008. UPDATE: the case was filed on August 7, although the case number can’t be known until Monday. Barr was the only declared write-in presidential candidate in the District. In order to be a declared write-in candidate in D.C., the presidential candidate must file a slate of presidential elector candidates with the Board. Each of the presidential elector candidates must have been a D.C. resident for at least three years. The residency requirement made it impossible for the Constitution Party to file for write-in status in D.C. in 2008. Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney were both on the ballot in D.C.
This will be the second lawsuit filed over a failure to count or tally write-ins. A somewhat similar lawsuit is pending in federal court in Pennsylvania over that state’s refusal to tally any write-in votes for Cynthia McKinney last year, even though she also filed a list of presidential elector candidates with the Pennsylvania Division of Elections.
On August 6, the Federal Election Commission released its book Federal Elections 2008. It contains the number of votes cast by state for each presidential candidate. It also contains the number of votes received by each candidate for Congress in 2008. The link to the on-line version is here. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
New York city councilmember Alan Gerson is running for re-election in the September 2009 Democratic primary. He is currently off the ballot. He needed 900 valid signatures and he submitted 7,000. But some of the petitions, containing about 1,000 signatures, were bound into a book that showed the candidate’s address as 1505 LaGuardia Place instead of 505 LaGuardia Place. The Board of Elections asked him to correct the error, but when the error was fixed, no new cover sheet with the correct address was submitted, so now all the signatures are no good. Gerson will be in court next week. See this news story. Thanks to Kimberly Wilder for the news.
Detroit voted for Mayor on August 4, 2009, using a non-partisan election. D’Artagnan Collier campaigned as the nominee of the Socialist Equality Party, and polled 1.4% of the vote in a six-candidate field.
Although this is a modest percentage, it is the highest percentage that any candidate for Mayor of Detroit, who was sponsored by any socialist party, has received since 1951. Among the parties that have run candidates for Mayor of Detroit since World War II are the Socialist Workers Party (which last ran in 2001), the Workers League (predecessor party to the Socialist Equality Party), and the Revolutionary Workers Party. In 1951 the Socialist Workers Party candidate had received 1.6%.
