On December 12, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) and U.S. House members Robert Wexler (D-Fl) and Rush Holt (D-NJ) said they will try to pass a bill in 2007, outlawing vote-counting machines that don’t create a paper trail. Senator Feinstein said her bill would include another provision, making it illegal for elections officials to engage in campaign activities for partisan candidates other than themselves. However, generally Congress has no authority over non-federal elections, so it is not clear how this would be constitutional.

Randy Stufflebeam, Constitution Party nominee for Illinois Governor, received 19,020 write-ins on November 7. This is the highest number of write-ins ever received by any minor party or independent candidate for any office in Illinois history.

The previous Illinois record number of write-in votes for any minor party or independent candidate was set in 2004, when Ralph Nader got 3,559 write-ins. Before that, the record has been the American Party’s 1972 presidential candidate, Congressman John G. Schmitz. He had received 2,471 write-ins in Illinois.

The Illinois Libertarian Party gubernatorial write-in candidate this year, Mark McCoy, received 476 write-ins. The Socialist Workers Party write-in candidate for Governor did not file as a declared write-in, so no one knows how many he received.

Ballot Access News has just learned that Barbara Fleischauer was elected to the West Virginia legislature last month. She served in the legislature in the past, but had been defeated for re-election in 2004. She is a Democrat who believes strongly that West Virginia ballot access laws are too harsh. She intends to re-submit her past bill, moving the petition deadline for minor party and independent candidates (for office other than president) from May to August (the presidential petition deadline is already in August). She is the wife of Law Professor Bob Bastress, who has won several important ballot access cases against West Virginia during the past 26 years.

In the meantime, the Libertarian Party lawsuit against that deadline is pending in the West Virginia Supreme Court.