On Sunday, December 7, the Ohio provisional ballots in the 15th U.S. House race were finally all counted. Democratic nominee Mary Jo Kilroy won with 45.91%. Republican nominee Steve Stivers received 45.15%. Libertarian Mark Noble received 4.62%. Independent Don Elijah Eckhart received 4.25%. Declared write-in candidate Travis Casper received .07%.

This outcome is somewhat surprising, because Republicans had prevailed in the Ohio Supreme Court on whether provisional ballots must include both the voter’s signature and the voter’s printed name on the outer envelope. Generally, the convention wisdom was that the excluded ballots would be more likely to help Democrats than Republicans.

It is also somewhat surprising that the Libertarian and the independent candidate each received so many votes, because polls before the election had made it clear that this was a very close race, just as it had been in 2006, when the Republican had defeated the Democrat by only 1,055 votes.

The arguments made by people who believe that Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” are sometimes very thoughtful and scholarly. For example, see Leo Donofrio’s blog, http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com. Donofrio has discovered that President Chester Alan Arthur, who probably was born in Vermont, but whose father was not a U.S. citizen, went through the naturalization process. Apparently Arthur’s naturalization process was not known to the public during Arthur’s campaign for vice-president in 1880, nor during his presidency.

Nevertheless, the lawsuits trying to stop the electors from voting for Obama on December 15 lack merit. The U.S. Constitution gives the presidential electors full power to vote for anyone they wish, whether the people they vote for are eligible or not. And no one argues that any presidential elector chosen last month, in any state, is not eligible. The only restriction the U.S. Constitution places on electors is that they not vote for two residents (for president and for vice-president) who live in the state that the elector lives in. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution does not even require a presidential elector to take an oath to support the Constitution. Some states, however, do require such an oath.

The only constitutional remedy to prevent someone from taking the office of President or Vice President, is by Congressional action. Congress is charged with counting the electoral votes in January. Congress is free to reject an electoral vote if Congress believes that electoral vote was cast for someone who is not qualified. This precedent was set in 1873, when Congress refused to count the 3 electoral votes cast for Horace Greeley, who had died after the November 1872 election but before the electors met in December 1872.

Somewhat by analogy, Congress, not any court, has the authority to judge election returns for members of Congress, and to make up its own mind as to whether the election returns announced by state elections officials are accurate or not.

Some states openly place presidential candidates on the ballot even though those presidential candidates freely admit that they do not meet the constitutional qualifications to be president. Other states do not. This is illustrated by the fact that the Socialist Workers Party, which several times has nominated presidential candidates who do not meet the qualifications, has placed such candidates on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Washington. Also, California accepted such a candidate as a declared write-in candidate. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link to Leo Donofrio’s webpage.

Some states still haven’t completely finished their vote tallies from last month’s elections. Therefore, national presidential vote totals are still incomplete. As of December 6, the totals seem to be:

Barack Obama, Democratic: 69,086,738
John McCain, Republican: 59,720,416
Ralph Nader, independent: 734,143
Bob Barr, Libertarian: 520,358
Chuck Baldwin, Constitution: 194,162
Cynthia McKinney, Green: 159,656
Alan Keyes, America’s Indp. Party: 46,586
Ron Paul, Montana Constitution/Louisiana Taxpayers: 21,372
Roger Calero + James Harris, Socialist Workers: 7,512
Brian Moore, Socialist: 7,251
Gloria La Riva, Party for Socialism and Liberation: 6,808
Richard Duncan, independent: 3,805
Charles Jay, Boston Tea: 2,420
John Joseph Polachek, New: 1,149
Frank McEnulty, New American Independent: 828
Jeffrey Wamboldt, We the People: 764
Thomas Stevens, Objectivist: 755
Gene Amondson, Prohibition: 653
Jeffrey Boss, Vote Here: 639
Jonathan Allen, Heartquake ’08: 545
George Phillies, Libertarian: 531
Ted Weill, Reform: 481
Bradford Lyttle, Pacifist: 110

This list only includes the 23 individuals who were on the ballot in at least one state. However, at least two candidates who were not on the ballot in any state, but who were declared write-in candidates in one state, outpolled some of the candidates on this list. They are Thaddaus Hill with 876 write-ins in Texas, and John Nettles with 391 write-ins in Florida.

The link at the top of the site goes to a state-by-state breakdown for the top 18 candidates who were on the ballot in at least one state.

The reason that the Libertarian Party gained very few votes since last week’s tally, and the reason that totals for the Socialist Workers Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation declined, is that New York official totals for those three parties are lower than the early New York unofficial reports collected by the news media on election night.

There seem to be errors in the Texas official canvass that may be corrected by the Texas Secretary of State soon.