Independent conservative presidential candidate Evan McMullin will appear on the ballot in Virginia. This may be more significant than it looks, because two new polls have Hillary Clinton only narrowly ahead of Donald Trump in the state; for a long while, Clinton enjoyed big leads, with her margin ahead of Trump sometimes hitting double-digit.
This also indicates that the McMullin campaign staff, small as it is, has done its homework. A write-in candidate in Virginia must meet certain criteria to qualify:
Write-in votes for President and Vice President shall be counted only for candidates who have filed a joint declaration of intent to be write-in candidates for the offices with the Secretary of the State Board not less than ten days before the date of the presidential election. The declaration of intent shall be on a form prescribed by the State Board and shall include a list of presidential electors pledged to those candidates which equals the whole number of senators and representatives to which the Commonwealth at that time is entitled in the Congress of the United States. A write-in vote cast for candidates for President and Vice President, or for a candidate for President only, shall be counted for the individual electors listed on the declaration of intent as pledged to those candidates.
In other words, if you’re a disgruntled conservative in Virginia who decides to write in “Ted Cruz” or some other non-declared candidate, the vote won’t count.
The McMullin campaign needed to collect 5,000 signatures to qualify; they announced they collected about 9,600.
If you’re thinking of writing in a name for president this year, don’t bother in Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota. Write-in candidates are not permitted in those states, according to Ballotpedia. If you’re thinking about it and you live in Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon Pennsylvania, Rhode Island or Vermont, your vote will count, whether or not your preferred candidate has filed paperwork. In the remaining states, a write-in candidate must file some paperwork with the state elections officials for the write-in votes to be valid.