The Libertarian candidate for Governor of Georgia, Garrett Michael Hayes, polled 3.84% last month. That was the best showing for any minor party candidate for Governor of Georgia since 1902, when the Peoples Party polled 6.39% in a 2-person race.

Hayes’ best county was Clarke, home of the city of Athens and the main campus of the University of Georgia. Clarke County is always one of the better Georgia counties for Libertarians anyway, but this is the first time Clarke had been the most Libertarian county. Georgia has 159 counties, more than any other state except Texas.

On late Saturday afternoon, November 16, the legal deadline for getting the job done, California released the official November 7, 2006 election returns.

The only real news from the official returns are the write-in totals, since semi-official totals for candidates listed on the ballot had been continuously tallied, and weren’t very different from the final figures.

Socialist Action Party, which has existed since 1984, had never run a candidate for partisan office anywhere in the U.S., until 2006, when Jeff Mackler was a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate from California. He polled 108 write-ins, with the bulk from San Francisco County (38) and Alameda County (34).

The Socialist Workers Party had also filed to have write-ins for its California candidates tallied. James Harris polled 46 for Governor, and Lea Sherman polled 47 for U.S. Senate. Harris had also been the SWP’s presidential candidate in 1996, 2000, and was the stand-in presidential candidate in 2004. The SWP needed a stand-in presidential candidate in 2004 because its actual presidential candidate, Roger Calero, was not a U.S. citizen and was therefore barred from the ballot in many states.

The Socialist Workers Party had nominated 4 write-in candidates for US House, and two of them filed to have their write-ins tallied. Naomi Craine received one write-in in the 34th district, and David Arguello received four write-ins in the 51st district.

The Socialist Equality Party also had a declared write-in candidate in California. John Burton, running for US House, 29th district, received 15 write-ins.

North Carolina has had very few independent candidates on its ballots. In the entire history of government-printed ballots in North Carolina, there has never been an independent candidate for U.S. House. The only statewide independent who ever appeared on a government-printed ballot was Ross Perot in 1992. Until this year, no independent had run for the legislature since 2000.

But in the November 7, 2006 election, two independents ran against each other, and against a Republican nominee, in the 52nd State House district, which includes part of Moore County (a county midway between Charlotte and Raleigh). The Republican nominee, Joe Boylan, was elected with 43.4% of the vote. One of the independents running against him (Gerald Galloway) polled 35.8%; the other (Bud Shaver) polled 20.8%.

Boylan faced these independent opponents because the Moore County Republican Party is split into two factions. The faction opposed to Boylan ran Shaver against him as an independent (Shaver is married to an officer of the Moore County Republican Party). The other independent candidate, Galloway, had recently been a registered Democrat, although he is now a registered independent. Moore County’s Democratic Party is weak and the Democrats didn’t nominate anyone.

Also, in Durham County, the incumbent Democratic District Attorney, Mike Nifong, faced both an independent opponent and a write-in opponent. Nifong was renominated in the Democratic primary without opposition in May 2006. After the primary, he generated controversy by his prosecution of several members of the Duke Univeristy LaCrosse team, on a charge of rape. The prosecution has been controversial since there is no evidence against the team members other than the word of the woman who accused them. Lewis Cheek qualified as an independent candidate, and Steve Monks carried on a write-in candidacy. Although Nifong was re-elected, he won without a majority. The results were Nifong 49.5%, independent Cheek 39.5%, write-in nominee Monks 11.0%.