On July 12, the Oklahoma State Board of Elections conducted its customary drawing to determine the order of parties on the November ballot. The Libertarian Party ended up with the top spot; Republicans are next; Democrats are third. Thanks to Chris Powell for this news.

The reason Oklahoma has a lottery for ballot position is that the Republican Party won a lawsuit against the old law back in the 1990’s. The old law said specifically that Democrats should always have the top line. Back then Oklahoma had a majority of Democrats in state government.

The New Mexico Libertarian Party held a primary on June 5. It had no gubernatorial candidate whose name was printed on the ballot, but it had a write-in gubernatorial candidate, Bob Walsh. Write-in candidates in primaries need as many write-ins as the number of signatures that would have been needed to put that same candidate on the primary ballot. For 2018 statewide Libertarians, the requirement was 230 write-ins. The original count showed Walsh with 175 write-ins.

He requested a recount in eight counties, but the results only gained him eleven votes, so he is still short and his name won’t be on the November ballot. However, some news stories erroneously have said that therefore the party will lose its status as a major party. Actually section 1-7-7 says, “‘Major political party’ means any qualified political party, any of whose candidates received as many as 5% of the total number of votes cast at the last preceding election for the office of Governor or president, as the case may be, and whose membership totals not less than one-third of 1% of the statewide registered voter file.”

UPDATE: see this thorough article in New Mexico Politics, which does a good job of explaining the controversy over the vote test.

On July 13, the California Secretary of State released the official tally for the June 5, 2018 primary. In three U.S. House races and nine Assembly races, a write-in candidate placed second and will appear on the November ballot. Naturally, these were all races with only one candidate whose name had been printed on the ballot. See the summary pages here.

The three U.S. House races were the 13th, 19th, and 32nd districts. Republican write-ins placed second in the latter two districts, and a Green placed second in the 13th district.

For Assembly, Republicans placed second via write-ins in these districts: 7, 20, 27, 61, and 64. Libertarians placed second with write-ins in these districts: 4, 21, 51, and 69. The 4th district race is easily the most dramatic, because there were three write-ins. The Libertarian got 132, the Republican got 130, and the Green got 128.

The full Statement of Votes (which has the vote by county for every office) is here.