The Virginia State Board of Elections has posted these election returns for the three statewide offices elected on November 5, 2013. The tally shows the Democratic nominee for Attorney General won by 106 votes. The returns are labeled “unofficial” and the Republican nominee is considered certain to ask for a recount after they are official.
Kshama Sawant, the Socialist Alternative Party candidate for Seattle city council, has pulled into a very narrow lead as more votes are counted in her race. The election is non-partisan. Two candidates were on the ballot, Sawant, and the incumbent councilmember. See this story. Thanks to Jim Riley and Pete Healey for this news. There are still many ballots to be counted. Generally, Oregon and Washington election returns on election night are more incomplete than the returns of any other state, because those two states use virtually all-mail ballots, and it takes a longer time to count them.
The Birmingham News has this story about James Hall’s ballot access lawsuit. Hall is an independent candidate for U.S. House, First District, in the special election being held December 17. The court hearing in U.S. District Court is at 1:30 p.m. in Montgomery, Wednesday, November 13.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Nader v Federal Election Commission, 13-556, on November 26. This is the case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals said Ralph Nader didn’t have standing to complain that the FEC didn’t require the Democratic Party to report its expenditures spent to keep Nader off many state ballots in 2004.
The Court probably won’t say what it did at its November 26 conference until December 2. The November 26 conference will also consider Judd v Libertarian Party of Virginia, in which the government of Virginia hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court will review the decision of the lower courts that struck down the ban on out-of-state circulators. Scotusblog on November 12 listed that case as its “petition of the day”, meaning Scotusblog feels there is a reasonable chance that the Court will hear that case.
The California State Senate only has 40 members. Amazingly, California soon will have held special elections to fill vacancies in six of the districts since the November 2012 election. On November 8, Republican State Senator Bill Emmerson of San Bernardino County said he is quitting effective December 1, because the job no longer fulfills him. See this story.
California has already held special State Senate Elections since the November 2012 election in these five districts: 4, 16, 26, 32, and 40.
The news story says that at least one Assemblymember will run in the new State Senate election. If he is elected, then there will be yet another special election to fill the Assembly seat. California has already held special Assembly special elections this year in these three districts: 45, 52, and 80.
Roland, Iowa, held a city election on November 5, 2013, for Mayor and City Council. The election is non-partisan. The incumbent Mayor, Roger Fritz, is a registered Libertarian. He did not want to run for re-election, but no one filed, so the town then prepared to elect a new Mayor by write-in votes. Mayor Fritz asked voters not to cast a write-in vote for him.
Nevertheless, at the election, Fritz received eleven write-ins, and the second-place finisher, David Donahue, got five write-ins. A total of 33 write-ins were cast for names other than Fritz and Donahue. After the votes were counted, Fritz was told by Donahue that Donahue doesn’t want the job. Thereupon, Fritz said he would accept another term. Thanks to Scott Lieberman and Kevin Takenaga for this news.