On October 13, the Green, Libertarian and Conservative Parties of New Jersey had filed a lawsuit in New Jersey state court, over several election law issues of discrimination against minor parties. The state still hasn’t answered the complaint, and is technically in default. However, the attorney for the state has hinted that some of the issues in the case may be settled by stipulation. We will probably know which issues those are in the next week. The case is Green Party of NJ v State, MER-C-125-06.

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.