Ever since 1920, the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives has published a booklet entitled “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election” after each presidential election. The Clerk has just published the 2008 booklet. It is 77 pages long and can be seen here.

This booklet uses arbitrary standards. For example, in the presidential table at the rear of the book, the “Independent” column contains the Ralph Nader vote, and Nader is properly credited with votes from every state but Oklahoma (because Oklahoma bans write-ins). This is true, even though Nader had different ballot labels in different states. In most states it was “independent” but in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah, it was something else. But, the “Independent” column collected all of Nader’s votes, regardless of label.

However, in the next-door column, the “Libertarian” column does not include any votes for Bob Barr from Tennessee. Instead, the authors of the table put the Tennessee Barr vote in the “Other” column, because Barr’s ballot label in Tennessee was “independent.” Also the chart omits Barr’s Maine write-in votes, even though the Secretary of State tallied them.

The book is worthwhile, however, even with its faults. Another table at the back includes the nationwide vote for each political party for each House of Congress. The table for U.S. House shows that Libertarians running for U.S. House, under their own party label (as opposed to Libertarians who were running with an “independent” label) polled 1,083,096 votes. The Libertarian Party has polled over 1,000,000 votes for U.S. House four times: 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2008. It is the only party, besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, that has polled over 1,000,000 votes for U.S. House since 1912, when the Progressive Party did so. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the news about the publication of the booklet.

On July 29, Gary Bartlett, Executive Director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said he will ask the state legislature to change the law on which parties are listed on the state income tax form. Current law says state income taxpayers can use their tax form to send a small donation to any qualified party that has registration of at least 1% of the statewide total. The proposed change would delete the 1% registration requirement, so that if the change were made, any qualified party would be listed.

Currently, among the 13 states that list qualified parties on their tax forms, North Carolina and Ohio are the only states that don’t list all the qualified parties. Ohio only lists parties that polled 20% of the vote in the last election. Also Ohio doesn’t give the taxpayer the choice of which party to help, but splits the money equally between the Democrats and Republicans.

On July 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, refused to rehear Nader v Democratic National Committee, the case filed in 2007 over the Democratic Party’s behavior in 2004. That Court had said Nader should have filed the case a few months earlier than he did, because of the Statute of Limitations. The decision had come out June 9, 2009.