Oregon held its primaries on May 20, 2008. No one ran in the Republican primary for Attorney General. Under Oregon election law, when no one appears on the ballot in a partisan primary, elections officials must tally all write-ins (Oregon has no law requiring write-in candidates to file a write-in declaration of candidacy). Multnomah County, which includes Portland, has posted the list of write-ins on its web page. See it here. The list includes almost 900 individuals who got at least one write-in, and goes on for 18 pages. Thanks to ElectionUpdates for the link.

On June 12, the Working Families Party of New York released a list of 143 legislative candidates who have received the party’s backing. All are Democrats or Republicans who are also running for a major party nomination. The Working Families organization will do the work of petitioning to get these candidates on the Working Families Party primary ballot.

There will probably also be a few candidates in the WFP primary who are not expecting to be nominees of the major parties.

The WFP has never before had this many legislative nominees in New York. New York elects 212 state legislators each election year. The WFP had 138 legislative nominees in 2006, 139 in 2004, 128 in 2002, and 106 in 2000. In 2006, six of the party’s legislative nominees were not also major-party nominees.

On June 13, Ross Perot launched this web site. The purpose of the site is to again attract attention to the growing national debt. That issue was one of Perot’s major campaign points in 1992. Thanks to Jack Dean.