For the first time since 1996, no presidential electors voted differently than they were expected to vote. On December 15, Barack Obama received 365 electoral votes and John McCain received 173.
In 2004, one of the Minnesota Democratic electors had voted for John Edwards for president instead of John Kerry. And in 2000, one of the D.C. Democratic electors had abstained rather than voting for Al Gore.
Pennsylvania has 67 counties. In Pennsylvania, all write-ins are legal (there is no procedure for write-in candidates to file in advance) and under the law, all should be tallied. However, once more, 17 counties have failed to include any write-ins from last month’s election, including the populous counties Cumberland, Lehigh, Luzerne, Montgomery, and Philadelphia.
On December 15, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue injunctive relief in Wrotnowski v Bysiewicz, the case concering Barack Obama’s qualifications that originated in Connecticut.
On December 13, California released its official vote tally from the November 2008 election. The most suspense concerned the write-in candidates for president. Ron Paul’s slate of presidential elector candidates received 17,006 write-ins. Chuck Baldwin received 3,145. James Harris for the Socialist Workers Party received 49, and Frank Moore (independent who lives in Berkeley, California) received 36. No one else had filed for write-in status for president.
These figures, and the final figures for the ballot-listed candidates, will be incorporated into the national presidential vote chart (above) on Tuesday evening.
The judge in the case called Green Party of Connecticut v Garfield said on December 11 that the decision will be out in late March or early April. This is the case over discriminatory aspects of the Connecticut public funding law.
