The Pennsylvania state elections office has released partial write-in totals from the November 2008 presidential election. The state office only tabulated write-ins for Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul, and Chuck Baldwin. Clinton received 4,724; Paul 3,527; Baldwin 986; others 8,180.

Only 49 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties reported any write-ins, which means the other 18 counties, including Philadelphia, unlawfully ignored them. Thanks to Blyden Potts for retrieving these returns. Pennsylvania is the only large state which doesn’t have a law requiring write-in candidates to request that their write-ins be counted. Thus, in theory, all write-ins are valid in Pennsylvania and all ought to be counted. It is likely that anyone who wants to find a partial total for other presidential candidates, such as Cynthia McKinney, could spend additional time looking at the returns sent in by each county to Harrisburg, and could pull out more votes from the 8,180 “other” category.

Ralph Nader has this essay in the weekend edition of Counterpunch (Dec. 19-21). The essay criticizes Scholastic Magazine’s policy of distributing sample ballots and educational material that include Democratic and Republican nominees, but exclude all others. Although Scholastic Magazine is private, its material is distributed in public schools.

On December 19, President George W. Bush signed Senate Joint Resolution 46, which lowers the salary of the Secretary of State from $191,300 to $186,600. SJR 46 had been introduced in the U.S. Senate on December 10, and it passed unanimously that same day. The House passed it unanimously on December 12. The reason for the bill is that Article I, section 6, says that no member of Congress may take an office if the salary for that office had been increased while that individual was in Congress. Senator Hillary Clinton was in Congress when the Secretary of State’s salary was increased in 2007.

SJR 46 acknowledges that some do not believe that lowering the salary is sufficient to make Hillary Clinton eligible to be Secretary of State. It says that if anyone sues, a 3-judge U.S. District Court should handle the case, and that any appeal should go immediately to the U.S. Supreme Court. To read the bill, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and enter SJR 46. That website does not seem to permit links from sites such as this.