The Daily Kos tracking poll for president, as of September 16, shows Obama 48%, McCain 44%, Nader 2%, Barr 2%, other 1%, undecided 3%. The poll breaks down the vote by various categories, such as age, sex, region, and party. Barr’s strongest showing by age category is 30-44 (4%), whereas Nader’s strongest showing by age category is older voters.
The New York Independence Party’s candidate for 13th U.S. House district, Carmine Morano, is campaigning to win. Morano is a health insurance expert. See this City Hall News story about his campaign. The 13th district comprises Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. The incumbent Republican, Vito Fossella, is not running for re-election. The district is fairly even balanced between Democrats and Republicans, so the winner in this district will probably be someone who polled substantially less than a majority.
A U.S. District Court Judge in Louisiana has set a hearing (by telephone) in Libertarian Party & Socialist Party v Dardenne, the presidential ballot access case. The hearing is Tuesday, September 16, at noon, central time.
In a related case, Brian Moore filed his case against Mississippi on September 16. Both the Louisiana and Mississippi cases involve disputes about whether state elections officials should have accepted paperwork. Both states say the various campaigns were too late.
U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock of Maine still has not ruled on the ballot access lawsuit filed September 9 by Laurie Dobson. She is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate. The hearing was Friday, September 12, and the Judge indicated he would rule very quickly, but as of 8:15 a.m. eastern time, Tuesday, September 16, he has not done so. The issue is whether a candidate who turns in her petitions to the town clerks by the deadline should still be kept off the ballot just because the town clerks didn’t finish checking the signatures in time.
Connecticut elections officials say the Libertarian presidential petition lacks approximately 500 valid signatures. Libertarian activist Andy Rule will be reviewing these findings. The party submitted over 12,000 signatures to meet a requirement of exactly 7,500 signatures, but elections officials say only 54% of the signatures were valid.
The Constitution and Green Parties this year did not collect as many as 7,500 raw signatures, so if the Libertarian petition re-verification process does not succeed, Ralph Nader will be the only presidential candidate on the ballot other than Barack Obama and John McCain. Connecticut permits write-ins for declared presidential candidates.
