California State Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) say in this press release that they will soon introduce a bill to bar presidential candidates from the ballot who don’t release their federal income tax returns before the primary or election. Such a bill would plainly violate the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 in U.S. Term Limits v Thornton. Thanks to Carla Marinucci for this news.

The Washington Secretary of State has denied qualified status to the Libertarian Party on the grounds that Gary Johnson did not get as much as 5% of the vote, when write-ins for president are included. However, Johnson got 5.01% of the presidential vote if write-ins are not included. The official election returns on the Secretary of State’s web page does not include any write-ins.

Federal law, Title 3, section 6, requires states to tell the national archives the number of popular votes received by each candidates for presidential elector. Here is the Washington state certificate. It does not include any write-in votes. Therefore, by the state’s apparent own admission, there were no valid write-in votes. Washington state, which has a write-in filing procedure, does not require write-in presidential candidates to submit a list of presidential elector candidates, which means that presidential write-ins in the state are not valid.