The Economist Magazine has polled its readers in all 195 nations of the world, on whether they want Barack Obama or John McCain to win the presidential election. Unfortunately readers are not able to vote for anyone else.

Then, the Economist created an imaginary “world electoral college”, assigning a number of electoral votes to each nation of the world, relative to its population. As of the evening of October 7, the “popular vote” is 20,413 Obama; 4,159 McCain. The “world electoral college” vote is Obama 8,482; McCain 16. McCain is only carrying Andorra, Georgia, and Macedonia. For the breakdown of the vote in each nation, see here. About one-fourth of the nations are marked simply as blank because not enough votes have been cast from such countries.

On October 7, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Bob Barr’s application for a place on the Louisiana ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court has not granted an injunction, putting anyone on a ballot, since October 1990, when it ordered Cook County, Illinois, to put the Harold Washington Party on the ballot for county office.

On October 6, the Ninth Circuit ruled against the Alaskan Independence Party, in the party’s attempt to keep Daniel DeNardo from running in its primary for public office. The case will go down in history with the wrong party name, because the U.S. District Court erroneously misstated the party’s name in its opinion, and the error was carried forward in the briefs submitted to the 9th circuit. The actual name of the party is Alaskan Independence Party, but the case will be reported as Alaska Independence Party v State, unless anyone asks the Court to correct the caption. 07-35186.

The Ninth Circuit opinion is here. The opinion implies that the Alaskan Independence Party was trying to persuade the state to let it nominate by convention. This is not accurate. The party’s only goal was to win the ability to bar Daniel DeNardo from running in its primary, since he has been suing the party and its officers for slander. The real flaw in the Alaskan Independence Party’s position is that the party seemed to be contradicting its own bylaws. Its bylaws say that anyone who is a registered member of the party may run in its primary. Before the party went to court, it should have amended its bylaws so that they conform to what it was actually trying to accomplish. In this sense, this case is very similar to a recent case brought by the Mississippi Democratic Party, which sued to get a closed primary before it had set forth precise bylaws explaining exactly what it wanted. The Mississippi Democratic Party also lost its lawsuit, earlier this year.

The Alaska Libertarian Party was a co-plaintiff in the Alaskan Independence Party’s lawsuit, but the Alaska Libertarian Party had no particular concrete problem, and the briefs on both sides generally ignored the Libertarian Party’s participation in the lawsuit. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.