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.

The Moderate Party, the only ballot-qualified party in Rhode Island other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, has announced that it has formed town committees in 17 of Rhode Island’s municipalities. Rhode Island only has 39 municipalities. The party says it is organizing additional committees in more places. The places in which the party already has committees are Barrington, Bristol, Burrillville, Coventry, Cranston, Cumberland, East Greenwich, Foster, Glocester, Jamestown, Lincoln, Narragansett, North Kingston, Providence, Scituate, Warwick, and West Warwick.

On August 27, the Green Party of Arkansas had filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot is unduly limited. The law seems to require a party to poll 3% for president in order to remain on the ballot in a presidential election year. No matter how well it does in other statewide races, it is removed from the ballot without a good showing in the presidential race.

The state is asking that the case be dismissed before any evidence-gathering is conducted. The state filed its brief on October 12, and seems to argue that if the petition requirements to get a party back on the ballot are reasonable, any retention test is constitutional, no matter how difficult that test is. The Green Party’s brief had been filed on October 5.