James G. Abourezk, a former member of the U.S. Senate from South Dakota, and also a former House member, is one of Ralph Nader’s three presidential elector candidates in that state this year. Abourezk also introduced Nader when Nader campaigned in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on October 11. Abourezk was elected to the U.S. House as a Democrat in 1970, and he was elected to the Senate in 1972. He was born in 1931.
Barack Obama has the top spot on the ballot in 15 states and the District of Columbia. John McCain has the top spot on the ballot in 14 states. Chuck Baldwin has the top spot in 6 states. Ralph Nader has the top spot in one state. Cynthia McKinney has the top spot in one state. In the other thirteen states, ballot rotation is different within different places in that state, so there is no one candidate who is always in the top spot.
Baldwin is listed first in the states that print presidential candidates on the general election ballot in alphabetical order: Hawaii, Idaho, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, and Vermont.
Nader is listed first in Oregon because a lottery determined that.
Cynthia McKinney is listed first in South Carolina because that state gives each political party an equal chance to be listed first, depending on a system of “taking turns” through the years. 2008 is the Green Party’s time to be listed first.
Obama is listed first in Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, D.C., Louisiana, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
McCain is listed first in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
The twelve states in which the same candidate isn’t listed first in every location within that state are Alaska, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wyoming.
Public schools in Stockton, California, have held mock presidential debates, in which various students impersonate the candidates. According to this news story, the only three presidential candidates with student “doubles” were Barack Obama, John McCain, and Gloria La Riva, the presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Three statisticians, Andrew Gelman, Aaron Edlin, and Nate Silver, have attempted to calculate the odds that a single voter would change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election this year. They find that a New Mexico voter has the best chance. A New Mexico voter has a 1 in 6,100,000 chance of determining who wins the election. By contrast, in 34 states, a single voter has worse odds than 1 in 100,000,000 of determining the outcome. D.C. voters have the worst odds; a D.C. voter only has a one in 490,000,000,000 chance of determining the outcome. See this AP story for more.
Late on Friday, October 31, U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara, a Reagan appointee, removed Alice Kryzan from the November ballot as the Working Families Party nominee (for U.S. House in the 26th district) and restored Jonathan Powers as the party’s nominee. A mid-level state court earlier in the day had put Kryzan on the ballot and taken Powers off. Then, the highest state court refused to intervene. So, then the losers in the state court case filed a federal lawsuit. The issue is whether the original Working Families Party nominee, Powers, is ineligible to serve in Congress based on his residence. Powers had won the party’s primary in September.
Powers doesn’t want to be the party’s nominee any longer, and moved out of New York state, claiming that he therefore did not meet the constitutional qualifications to be a member of Congress from New York state. If he is still eligible, he is stuck on the ballot. Article I says members of Congress must live in the state they seek to represent “when elected.” Since both Powers and Kryzan want Kryzan to have the Working Families nomination, one might wonder who filed the federal lawsuit. The answer is that the federal case was filed by supports of Chris Lee, the Republican nominee. Lee doesn’t want Kryzan to have the Working Families nomination, because Kryzan is also the Democratic nominee, and if she gets both nominations, that will help her. On the other hand, it is widely expected that Lee will win in any event.
It is somewhat astonishing that New York still doesn’t have its ballot in place for the November 4 election, in the 26th U.S. House district. It is likely the 2nd circuit will be involved on Monday, November 3. This Buffalo News article explains some of the problems for elections officials.
