On December 6, a U.S. District Court in Maryland upheld the constitutionality of ballots in which candidates are listed by alphabetical order. The case is Schaefer v Lamone, L-06-0896. The plaintiff, Michael Schaefer, hasn’t decided whether or not to appeal to the 4th circuit.
Venezuela held a presidential election last weekend. Although there were approximately 12 parties on the ballot in that election, almost all of them nominated either the incumbent (President Chavez) or his leading opponent. Venezuelan election law permits fusion, so Venezuelan voters were able to vote for Chavez under any one of approximately six party labels. A few states in the U.S. also use fusion. It is not known if fusion is used in any other nations in presidential elections.
New Hampshire is one of the few states that permits write-ins, yet has no law asking write-in candidates who want their write-ins tallied to file a declaration of write-in candidacy, before the election.
In states like this, one never knows whether the state elections officials will do a tally of write-in candidates. Fortunately, this year, as well as in 2004, the New Hampshire Secretary of State, on his own, has voluntarily made such a tally. His office says that Richard Kahn, Libertarian write-in candidate for Governor last month, received 323 write-ins.
Pennsylvania is now the only state with a combination of severe ballot access (in 2006), which also has a bad record on tallying write-ins (like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania has no law on write-in declarations of candidacy). We still don’t know if Pennsylvania Dept. of Elections will do a write-in tally for any of the known minor party write-in candidates.
On December 5, Republican leaders of the U.S. House refused to put HR 5388 on the schedule of legislative business. HR 5388 is the bill to temporarily expand the size of the US House, so as to give the District of Columbia a voting member, plus add an additional member for Utah. On December 4, the Utah legislature had passed a bill dividing the state up into 4 districts, but that action is now moot, unless the new Congress takes up a similar bill in January 2007.
On December 5, Republican leaders of the U.S. House refused to put HR 5388 on the schedule of legislative business. HR 5388 is the bill to temporarily expand the size of the US House, so as to give the District of Columbia a voting member, plus add an additional member for Utah. On December 4, the Utah legislature had passed a bill dividing the state up into 4 districts, but that action is now moot, unless the new Congress takes up a similar bill in January 2007.
