Washington had 36 gubernatorial candidates on the primary ballot

[bluedye33139]

I just learned that this is because there are two basic ways to get on the ballot. You can pay a fee, which I think is set around 1% of the governor's salary, or you can collect a certain number of signatures of registered voters.

Because of the pandemic, the signature requirement was reduced to zero, and because we're Washington and always focused on fairness, it was determined that making people pay would also be somewhat unjust.

So, the ballot was weird. I think when all the chips fall, this actually worked out best for the incumbent, our current and wonderful governor. His main Republican challenger had to contend with more than two dozen Republicans