The Ohio Secretary of State’s web page has unofficial election returns here (this particular link is to the statewide offices). They show that each of the three minor party declared write-in candidates for statewide office received the needed 500 write-in votes to be nominated.

For the Green Party, Anita Rios for Governor received 628 write-ins. For the Libertarians, Kevin Knedler received 716 for Secretary of State, and Bob Bridges received 731 for Auditor. Assuming these returns hold up in the official tally, all three candidates will be on the November ballot.

The two parties might have had more write-in candidates in their own primary, but for the restrictive law that requires write-in candidates to file a declaration of candidacy 72 days before the primary. There is no rational need for such a deadline to file as a declared write-in, and most states have a write-in declaration of candidacy deadline within a month of election day. In some states the deadline is the Friday before the election.

Current Ohio law requires a party to poll 2% for Governor, if it wishes to remain ballot-qualified for 2015 and 2016. The Green Party thus has a fair chance to meet this standard. It is always conceivable that in 2015, the Ohio legislature will amend the definition of “party” so that the vote test applies to any statewide partisan office, so the Libertarian showing for Secretary of State and Auditor may yet help the Libertarians to remain ballot-qualified beyond 2014 as well. Thanks to Tom Yager for pointing out that the write-in unofficial results are already on the Secretary of State’s web page.