Washington state candidate filing for the August 5 primary has closed. Here is the list. The state has no statewide offices up this year. For the ten U.S. House races, there are 49 candidates: 23 Republicans, 13 Democrats, one Green, and 12 independents. Some of the independents chose “independent” as a ballot label; some chose “no party preference”; one chose “Work and Wealth”; one chose “National Union”; one chose “Human Rights”; one chose “Citizens.”

Each U.S. House district has at least one candidate from each of the two major parties. Consequently, it is overwhelmingly likely that the November ballot for U.S. House will list only Republicans and Democrats. Ever since 2008, when Washington state started using top-two, the only time someone who wasn’t a major party nominee appeared on the November ballot for Congress or statewide office was once in 2010, when an independent qualified for US House, 7th district, in a race in which no Republican had run.

A U.S. District Court in Michigan will hear Moore v Johnson on Wednesday, May 21, at 9:30 a.m. This is one of the cases that challenges Michigan’s law requiring candidate petitions to be circulated only by registered voters. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.

On May 15, the California Assembly passed AB 2766. The bill deletes the requirement that candidates for County Central Committee must file a loyalty oath, saying they do not advocate the violent overthrow of the government. The existing law was declared unconstitutional last year, and only applies to candidates in the Democratic, Republican, and American Independent Parties.

The leader of the American Independent Party, Mark Seidenberg, had testified against this bill when it was in the Assembly Elections Committee, but the representative of the Secretary of State responded at that hearing that if the party desires to require the oath for its candidates for party office, the party is free to have its own bylaw requiring the oath.