On August 24, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office said that the independent presidential petitions of Gary Johnson and Richard Duncan both have enouvh valid signatures. Both of them had approximately 12,000 signatures. The requirement is 5,000.

The Secretary of State’s office said that the petitions for Darrell Castle and Michael Steinberg do not have enough valid signatures. The Steinberg petition consisted of Steinberg for president and Rocky De La Fuente for vice-president. In other states these two are also running mates, but De La Fuente is the presidential candidate and Steinberg is the vice-presidential candidate. The De La Fuente campaign reversed the names on the Ohio petition to avoid having a fight with the Secretary of State over the sore loser law.

The three qualified parties in Ohio are Democratic, Green, and Republican.

Daily Kos has this article about the August 2, 2016 Washington state primary, and the Treasurer’s race. Three Democrats and two Republicans filed. Even though 52% of the electorate voted for one of the three Democrats, only two Republicans will be on the November ballot, because they came in first and second.

The Daily Kos story properly blames the top-two system for the result, which is that voters who want a Democrat to be Treasurer are disenfranchised in November. Washington state permits write-ins in the general election, and conceivably a Democrat could launch a write-in campaign. But the state won’t let any of the three Democrats who filed in the primary be write-in candidates. Thanks to Jan Tucker for the link.

On the evening of August 22, the Ohio Libertarian Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on the ballot as Libertarians, rather than putting them on the ballot with no label whatsoever. Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted. There is no U.S. Supreme Court number yet.

The party’s filing says, “Assuming Johnson/Weld were to be certified as an independent ticket and survive official protests, it (unlike the established parties’ presidential tickets) will still not represent LPO as a political party, will not be listed as the ‘Libertarian’ ticket on Ohio’s ballot, and cannot meet Ohio’s 3% vote test on behalf of LPO in order to win for it qualified party status in Ohio in future elections.”

Ohio still hasn’t finished checking Johnson’s independent petition. The party filed this appeal on August 22 because the Sixth Circuit had again denied any relief that same day.