Harvard History Professor Jill Lepore has an essay on the history of the government-printed ballot in the United States, in The New Yorker Magazine of October 13. It is a substantial article, covering six pages, yet it does not mention the point that abuse of the government-printed ballot in the United States has deprived voters of their right to vote freely for the candidate of their choice, in many instances.

Government-printed ballots in the U.S. began in 1888. Before 1888, it was impossible for any state government to prevent a voter from voting for anyone he wished. Since then, government-printed ballots have sometimes been used to prevent people from voting for presidential candidates who were so important, they carried other states in the electoral college. This list of presidential candidates who carried some states in the electoral college, and yet were off the ballot in certain other states in which they had tried to get on, includes:

1. Theodore Roosevelt (Oklahoma 1912)
2. William Howard Taft (California, South Dakota 1912)
3. Robert La Follette (Louisiana 1924)
4. Strom Thurmond (Oklahoma, Maryland, Indiana 1948)
5. Harry Truman (Alabama 1948)
6. Lyndon Johnson (Alabama 1964)
7. George Wallace (D.C. 1968)

Also, Charles Evans Hughes would have been off the ballot in Louisiana in 1916 if he had not been put on the ballot by court order.

The Lepore essay also has a factual error on another subject. It says, “In this fall’s Presidential election, every citizen who is 18 or older – except, in some states, prisoners and felons – will be eligible to vote.” This sentence is not true. U.S. citizens who reside in U.S. territorial possessions may not vote in this fall’s Presidential election. Furthermore, persons who have been adjudged mentally incompetent may not vote at all in most states.

On October 14, a U.S. District Court in Nashville ruled in favor of the Tennessee Democratic Party, and against State Senator Rosalind Kurita, in Kurita’s ballot access lawsuit. She says she will appeal to the 6th circuit. She had won the August Democratic primary but the Tennessee Democratic Party certified someone else to be the Democratic nominee. The case is Kurita v The State Primary Board of the Tennessee Democratic Party, 3:08cv-948. The decision is 41 pages. It depends on the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that give substantial autonomy on political parties to run their own affairs (see pages 10-17). It also depends on the Tennessee statutory scheme, which does seem to give political parties a great deal of authority to settle primary election vote-counting disputes (although in this case, everyone agrees that Kurita won the primary, by the narrow margin of 19 votes).

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.