The Washington Secretary of State has completed the official canvass and has determined that Gary Johnson got 5.01% of the total vote. This means the Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified for the next four years. See this story.
Here is a link to the official election returns for president in Washington.
The Libertarian Party was also a ballot-qualified party in Washington for the period November 2000 through November 2004. It earned that by polling over 5% for Lieutenant Governor and Auditor in the 2000 election. Because Washington started using a top-two system in 2008, qualified status became much more difficult starting that year. Parties no longer have nominees in Washington for anything except president, so the vote test at that point became much more difficult.
The only other party that has had qualified status in Washington state in the last 80 years was the Reform Party, which had it November 1996 through November 1998. The last third party before that to have qualified party status was the Farmer-Labor Party during the 1920’s, which elected several legislators. The Washington state vote test was 10%, not 5%, before 1977. Thanks to Chris Powell for this news.
The only states with no ballot-qualified parties, other than the Republican and Democratic Parties, are Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. However, in Georgia, the only ballot-qualified third party, the Libertarian Party, is only on the ballot for statewide office, not district or county office.
So does being a qualified party in Washington mean that you no longer have to gather petition signatures to place your candidates on the ballot, or do you still have to gather petition signatures to place your candidates on the ballot (even if it is for the primaries)?
So I assume that write in votes aren’t counted in the overall total of votes in calculating the 5%, then. Dave Leip’s Atlas counts them, and with the write in votes counted, Johnson came in at 4.88%.
Apparently the state doesn’t count the write-ins toward the total.
As I understand it, major party candidates do not have to petition, but the only office for which a petition was necessary was for president, and that petition only requires 1,000 signatures.
The write-in votes are technically not valid votes, because there are no candidates for presidential elector associated with presidential write-ins in Washington. Washington is free to provide that declared presidential write-ins file a slate of electors (as most states do). But Washington doesn’t do that. If it did, then the presidential write-ins for such presidential candidates would be valid, and should be included in the denominator.
Probably the Secretary of State decided not to claim that the presidential write-ins are valid, because then the declared write-in presidential candidates could logically demanded that the state tally their write-ins and report them. Probably the Secretary of State was so adverse to that, it decided to take the easier path and recognize the Libertarian Party. Last week the Secretary of State had been taking the position that the write-ins should count for determining party status, so the decision seems to reflect a change in attitude by the Secretary of State.
Federal law requires all states to report the number of valid votes cast for all candidates for presidential elector.
Federal law does not require any State to report the number of “valid votes” cast for all candidates for presidential elector.
Write-in votes for all offices are valid votes in Washington.
If a write-in candidate received the most votes in Washington for President, he would probably have standing to require that he be permitted to designate electors, or Congress could simply disregard renegade states like Washington or California.
You mean “averse” rather than “adverse”.
Federal law, Title 3, section 6, says “it shall be the duty of the executive of each State to communicate under the seal of the state to the Archivist of the United States a certificate of ascertainment, setting forth the nsmes of such electors and the canvass or other ascertainment under the laws of such State of the number of votes given or cast for each person for whose appointment any and all votes have been given or cast.”
It is not necessary to tally the individual write-in votes to ascertain that the Clinton electors have received the most votes, and that the margin between the Clinton electors and the Trump electors exceeds the total number of write-ins, undervotes, and overvotes.
Congress is exceeding its authority under the Constitution to demand extraneous information.