On November 24, a Superior Court Judge in Alameda County, California, dismissed the case Cummings v Stanley, on procedural grounds. The issue was whether certain members of the Alameda County Republican Central Committee were validly elected in the June 2008 primary.

Some of the winners, whose names were on the Republican primary ballot for party office, seem not to have met the duration of membership requirement for candidates to appear on a partisan primary ballot. These winners, for the most part, are Ron Paul supporters. The chairperson of the Alameda County Republican Central Committee filed a lawsuit on July 25, 2008, to unseat them. However, the judge ruled that the lawsuit should have been filed within 5 days after the canvass of the primary had been completed. Thanks to the commenter who told me this news. See here for a news story about the decision. The chair had also sued Alameda County’s elections department for not checking the registration history before it placed the candidates on the primary ballot. California law says that no one may appear on a partisan primary ballot if he or she has been a member of any other party during the preceding year before filing.

The Washington Post of December 1 has this article, predicting that the U.S. Senate will pass certain bills that have not passed in the past. The article includes the bill that would expand the size of the U.S. House from 435 to 437, giving a new seat to Utah and the other new seat to the District if Columbia.

Alabama is a state that has write-in space on the November ballot for president, and which has no requirement that write-in presidential candidates who want their write-ins must file a declaration of write-in candidacy. However, traditionally, the Alabama Secretary of State has never included any write-ins in her official canvass of votes. But in 2006, for the first time, she included photocopies of all the write-ins certified to her office, for all office. Now, for the 2008 official canvass, she has again posted the copies of write-in tallies on her webpage.

Unfortunately, only 20 counties bothered to send her any data about write-ins. Alabama has 67 counties; the 20 counties that submitted write-in information comprise approximately half the population of the state.

In the 20 counties that reported write-ins, Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton were the clear winners. There seem to be 279 write-ins for Hillary Clinton for president, and 273 write-ins for Ron Paul for president.

Among presidential candidates who were actually running (yet who weren’t on the Alabama ballot), the write-ins are: Alan Keyes 14, Cynthia McKinney 6, Brian Moore 4, Ted Weill 1 (Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin were on the ballot).

If you live in Alabama, in one of the 47 counties that broke the law and did not tally any write-ins, you should consider making a complaint. Some years ago the Attorney General issued an opinion, saying that counties must tally all write-ins. The only 20 counties that submitted write-ins to the Secretary of State are Baldwin, Barbour, Calhoun, Cherokee, Clarke, Covington, Elmore, Etowah, Henry, Jefferson, Lawrence, Limestone, Marengo, Marion, Mobile, Montgomery, Russell, St. Clair, Walker, Washington.

The most populous counties that did NOT report their write-ins are Madison (which has Huntsville), Lee, Morgan, Shelby, and Tuscaloosa.