Congressional Quarterly Publishes “America Votes 2010”

Congressional Quarterly has just published “America Votes 2010”, a 465-page book of election returns from each state for Congress and Governor. The book is the 29th in the series. A similar book is published every two years. The author, as in recent past years, is Rhodes Cook.

America Votes 2010 is the only reference book published so far that includes the Pennsylvania write-ins from November 2010. Pennsylvania permits write-in votes, but some counties of Pennsylvania fail to count any, and the state is very reluctant to include the write-ins in its official returns. Pennsylvania’s Department of State didn’t canvass them for four months after the election, and as a result, the other publications that include official election returns failed to mention any write-in votes. Other organizations that publish official election returns are the Federal Election Commission and the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Even America Votes doesn’t say who received the Pennsylvania write-ins. One reason Pennsylvania has so much trouble with write-ins is that it is the only large state that has no procedure by which a write-in candidate can file a declaration of candidacy. Therefore, the law requires Pennsylvania election officials to count and canvass all write-ins, even the silly ones. So, the result is that frequently, there is no canvassing of any write-ins at all. The minor parties that were left off the ballot in 2010 complained about this, but the federal courts said they didn’t have standing to complain about the policy, which was an absurd conclusion.


Comments

Congressional Quarterly Publishes “America Votes 2010” — 5 Comments

  1. Pingback: Congressional Quarterly Publishes “America Votes 2010? | ThirdPartyPolitics.us

  2. Minority rule gerrymanders in both houses of the gerrymander Congress.

    1/2 votes x 1/2 areas = about 25 percent minority rule in the House Reps — a bit less in the Senate (but could be much worse if one party wins in more of the very small States).

    Abolish the EVIL 666 Senate.

    P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.

  3. I have various volumes of that publication, including the 2010, and it is a very good source of election statistics. Of course, they depend on what the states report, but that’s another issue.
    I think that all write-in votes should be counted, but they are rarely reported.
    From Puerto Rico I can tell you that the only time they have published write-in totals was in 2004, when a court ordered the electoral commission to do so, because there was a declared write-in candidate, Mr. Rogelio Figueroa. He got about 2,000 votes. In 2008 he ran again, this time with his name on the ballot, and received about 53,763 votes (2.75%).

  4. Thanks for mentioning America Votes. However, please note that Congressional Quarterly did not publish America Votes. It was CQ Press. CQ Press split from Congressional Quarterly in 2008.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.