Last month, Libertarian Party nominee Damien Ober polled 5,915 votes for “Shadow” U.S. Senator. The District of Columbia holds elections for U.S. Senate, and U.S. House, even though Congress does not recognize the winners of these elections (the election for U.S. House is separate from the election for Delegate to the U.S. House). Although 5,915 votes is only 2.63%, that is the highest vote total that any Libertarian nominee for partisan office in D.C. has ever polled.

Qualified parties in D.C. are those that poll 7,500 votes for any partisan office. The only qualified parties in D.C. history, besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, have been the Statehood Green Party (formerly the D.C. Statehood Party), the Umoja Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the U.S. Labor Party.

Previous D.C. Libertarian vote totals (other than for president) have been 3,612 for City Council-at-Large in 1988, 980 for Mayor in 1990, and 4,594 for Delegate to the U.S. House in 2000. For president, no Libertarian has ever polled more than 1,104 votes in D.C. Because the D.C. Libertarian Party has never polled 7,500 votes for any office, it has never been a qualified party.

The U.S. Senate shadow election this year had four candidates. The other three were Democrat Paul Strauss, 183,519 votes; Republican Nelson Rimensynder, 18,601 votes; Statehood Green Keith Ware, 16,881 votes.

Libertarians tried to get Dick Heller on the ballot this year for Delegate to U.S. House. His petition failed, and Bob Barr’s petition also failed. If Heller had qualified, he probably would have received 7,500 votes, since the Delegate’s race had no Republican in the race. The vote totals this year for Delegate are Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat, 228,376 votes; Statehood Green, Maude Louise Hills, 16,693 votes.

The Pennsylvania Elections Department posted the official canvass of votes to its own website on Friday, December 5. The Department says it will post the write-ins as well, sometime within the next 30 days.

New Mexico and North Carolina are among the 12 states in which the state income tax form gives taxpayers an opportunity to direct a small amount of money to the political party of the taxpayer’s choice. The North Carolina state income tax form that will be mailed soon includes the Libertarian Party. And the New Mexico state income tax form that will be mailed soon includes the Constitution, Green, Independent and Libertarian Parties.

There is some ambiguity in both states about which parties should be listed, so in each instance, this is good news. North Carolina law says that only parties that are both ballot-qualified and which have registration of 1% of the state total should be listed on the tax forms. However, the North Carolina Libertarian Party is challenging all election laws that discriminate against smaller parties. The registration threshold for listing on the tax form may be unconstitutional, especially since state policy eliminates all a party’s registered members when it fails to poll enough votes. The Libertarians lost their 13,000 registered voters in 2005 because the party didn’t poll enough votes to remain on the ballot in November 2004. This year voters can again register Libertarian, but the party had to start all over again from zero.

In New Mexico, the law on which parties are qualified has been unclear for decades. It is not clear whether the Secretary of State thinks that all of the parties that are being listed on the new tax forms are still ballot-qualified, but it is a good sign that the Secretary of State told the state Taxation and Revenue Department to include all of the minor parties that appeared on this year’s ballot.