Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* The extremely narrow race in Florida’s 13th congressional district is now heading to court. Local election officials declared Vern Buchanan (R) the winner by a 369-vote margin yesterday, prompting Christine Jennings (D) to file a lawsuit<\/a> alleging “pervasive malfunctioning” in the district’s touch-screen voting machines. In all, 18,000 votes appear to have gone missing<\/a>. (Buchanan’s explanation for his unearned victory, by the way, is particularly amusing<\/a>.)<\/p>\n * In North Carolina’s 8th congressional district, a recount is underway, with Rep. Robin Hayes’ (R) lead over challenger Larry Kissell (D) shrinking<\/a> to less than 350 votes, as of now. As the AP reported, Hayes saw his already-slim margin narrow by almost 120 votes after hundreds of provisional ballots were counted late last week.<\/p>\n * And in more undecided news, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) still leads Victoria Wulsin (D) in Ohio’s 2nd congressional district, and the margin grew slightly<\/a> after provisional and remaining absentee ballots were added to mix. Schmidt’s margin is now just over 2,900 votes in unofficial returns.<\/p>\n * When it comes to gender diversity, 2006 was a good year<\/a>, but change is slow. The good news: the House will have its first female speaker, and there will be a record number of women lawmakers at the federal and state level. The bad news: at this rate, there still won’t be parity between men in women in Congress for several decades.<\/p>\n