August 28, 2026 · Press Release
Four Skagit County Write-In Candidates Advance to November
At the August 2026 Washington state primary, four write-in candidates received more than 1% of the total vote cast for Skagit County offices.
In Washington’s top-two system, write-in candidates do not advance to the general election unless they meet the 1% vote test. For the first time in Washington State history, four candidates in one election will advance to the general election as write-in candidates, because their opponents were unopposed.
There were nine candidates statewide who achieved the 1% criteria to advance to the November election.
October 11, 2026 · Commentary
Common Law and Common Sense: Older Than Any Party
Two phrases get thrown around in every election season as if one side owned them. Neither side does. Common law and common sense are older than every political party in America, and the record shows they have never belonged to one.
What the common law is
The common law is not a statute. It is the body of rules that judges worked out, case by case, over eight centuries, by asking what a reasonable person would expect and then applying that answer the same way the next time. It gave us the jury, the presumption of innocence, the rule that a contract means what it says, and the idea that no one, including the king, is above the law. Magna Carta put part of it in writing in 1215. The colonists brought it with them, and when Washington became a state it adopted the common law as “the rule of decision in all the courts of this state,” so far as it fits our Constitution and laws (RCW 4.04.010). It is the operating system under everything the Legislature has written since.
What common sense is
Common sense is the same habit of mind outside the courtroom: the judgment an ordinary person uses to tell whether a rule produces a result that is fair, workable, and honest. Thomas Paine borrowed the phrase for the pamphlet that moved the colonies toward independence in January 1776. His argument was not that his readers should trust him. It was that they could reason the matter out for themselves.
Why neither is partisan
Start with the dates. The common law was already six hundred years old when the first American parties formed in the 1790s. Paine published Common Sense eleven years before the Constitution was written and before any party existed to claim it. George Washington, who belonged to no party, spent much of his Farewell Address warning against “the spirit of party” itself.
Then look at who used them. The delegates in Philadelphia in 1787, who would soon divide into Federalists and Anti-Federalists, had all learned law from the same book, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Hamilton and Jefferson, who agreed on almost nothing, agreed on Blackstone. The Seventh Amendment, ratified with the support of both camps, preserved the right to a jury “according to the rules of the common law.” For two hundred years since, lawyers of every party have stood in the same courtrooms and argued from the same precedents. The precedent does not check your registration before it applies.
The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1881
Experience is not partisan. A rule that has survived a thousand cases survived because it worked for whoever walked through the door.
Washington recognizes this in the way it fills its courts. Judicial offices in this state are nonpartisan by law. No party label appears beside a judge’s name on the ballot, because the job is to apply the same law to everyone.
Why it matters to the League
The League of Constitutional Voters takes no position on any candidate, party, or policy question. That is Article I of our bylaws, and it is also, we would argue, plain common sense: an organization that wants every candidate treated the same cannot have a favorite.
But we do hold one view, and it comes straight out of the common law’s oldest principle, that government rests on the consent of the governed. Consent requires a choice. In 2025, two out of three elections in this country had exactly one name on the ballot. A ballot with one name asks nothing of the voter and promises nothing in return. You do not need a party, or a law degree, to see the problem. You need common sense, and the common law has been on your side since 1215.
That is why the League does what it does: finds the empty ballots, teaches anyone who wants to run how to do it, and presents every candidate on identical terms. Neither party invented that idea. It belongs to the people who showed up.