Scholastic Magazine has been conducting a mock presidential election for its readers (children in grades one through twelve) since 1940. The poll this year closed on October 10. Approximately 250,000 ballots were cast. Apparently the ballot this year only named Barack Obama and John McCain, but a write-in line was provided.

The results: Obama 57%, McCain 39%, write-ins 4%. Scholastic did not give any information about write-ins, except to say eleven percent of the write-ins were for Hillary Clinton. Scholastic did say this is the highest percentage of write-ins ever recorded in any of its presidential elections.

Former Arkansas State Representative Dwayne Dobbins has a hearing in Pulaski County Circuit Court on Friday, October 17, at 10 a.m., in his lawsuit to be restored to the ballot. He won the Democratic primary in May, but then the Democratic Party refused to accept him as its nominee. The case is Dobbins v Arkansas Democratic Party, cv2008-11040. Judge Chris Piazza has the case. If Dobbins does not win, the only name on the ballot for the 39th district State Representative seat will be Richard Carroll, the Green Party nominee.

On October 14, Ralph Nader sent this letter to Janet Brown, Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates, 1200 New Hampshire Ave. NW, Washington DC 20036:

“Dear Ms. Brown, in a spirit of fairness, since you won’t allow us in the debates or release the secret polls that you rely on to figure out which candidates meet your threshold of 15% national support, I would like to ask that you allow me, and the three other third party Presidential candidates who are on the majority of state ballots, the common courtesy to at least have a seat at the debates among the audience.

As a secondary point, I would like to ask you to make public which polls the Commission on Presidential Debates relied upon to determine who is allowed into the Debate. We have reason for concern on this matter, as it appears that some major polling organizations, Gallup to name one that you have used in the past, claim to include third parties, but on closer inspection this is only true one out of every 200 times.

Gallup’s daily tracking poll asks voters if they support Obama, McCain, neither, or someone else. Because millions of Americans don’t know we or the other third party candidates are running, less than half a percent say someone else. It is an accepted rule of thumb in polling to go from the general to the specific, not the other way around. As evidence for this, in polls that mention me by name in the primary question, such as the Sept. 24 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, I get 5% support nationally. This is still far from the 15% threshold that your considerably inflated criteria requires, but it would be rather disingenious bordering on fraudulent to base a criteria on a threshold in polls, which you don’t even bother to admit may not even be polling the candidates other than those of the Republican and Democratic Parties that created and control the CPD. For Fairness and the Voters Right to Know, Ralph Nader.” UPDATE: according to the Nader campaign, the e-mail address for Janet Brown is jb@debates.org.