The Socialist Equality Party ticket of Joseph Kishore for president and Jerry White for vice president will be on the ballot in Washington state as independent candidates for this November’s general election. The Secretary of State informed the campaign of its ballot status via email on Tuesday and issued a formal press release later in the day.

Ballots will be mailed to voters in Washington beginning on October 18.

Supporters of the SEP collected 1,395 signatures during the course of a three-month-long campaign across Washington state, well over the 1,000 required to place Kishore and White on the ballot. The campaign won broad support among workers and youth in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane and Vancouver (across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon) for the SEP’s opposition to genocide and war. 

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The Secretary of State accepted just 1,020 of the signatures, claiming 375 were rejected for being duplicates, not matching the signature on file, or not having been found in the state’s database.

SEP presidential candidate Joseph Kishore welcomed the determination, writing:

I am proud to announce that the Socialist Equality Party campaign of myself and Jerry White will be on the ballot in the state of Washington. This is the product of the combined work of a campaign team across Washington, Oregon, Montana and California to bring a genuinely socialist perspective to the working class in the Pacific Northwest.

Throughout the course of the campaign, supporters for the campaign held thousands of conversations that revealed a widespread hostility to the Democrats and Republicans, as well as toward pseudo-left groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

In addition, Kishore noted that, as a result of Washington state’s election laws, a campaign statement of the Socialist Equality Party will be sent out to an estimated 5 million registered voters in a voter pamphlet before the November election.

As posted by Kishore, the statement submitted by the campaign reads:

The Socialist Equality Party calls for the socialist reorganization of society that 1) ends the dictatorship of the corporate-financial oligarchy and transfers political power to the working class; 2) establishes public ownership of and democratic control over multi-billion-dollar corporations and financial institutions and, thereby, restructures the economy to meet the needs of mass society—full employment, workplace safety, the abolition of poverty, universal healthcare, affordable housing, high-quality education, child care, a secure retirement, expansion of cultural and recreational facilities—rather than the accumulation of massive corporate profits and private fortunes; and 3) secures peace and democracy through the abolition of the military-industrial complex and the massive network of state intelligence agencies.

The Socialist Equality Party declares that the 2024 election is dominated by three critical issues: First, the reckless militarism of the Democratic and Republican parties—seeking to secure the global interests of the financial-corporate oligarchy—has brought the United States to the very brink of World War III. The US-NATO war in Ukraine and the genocidal war in Gaza are part of a broader struggle for world domination.

Second, democracy in the US is giving way to authoritarianism, in which the Democrats and Republicans are implicated. Political dictatorship is the outcome of unrestrained corporate economic power.

Third, social inequality has reached levels unprecedented in modern US history. This country has the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, whose collective wealth stands at a record $5.2 trillion. The wealth of the 10 richest billionaires exceeds that of the collective wealth of half the US population. The SEP calls for the expropriation of billion-dollar fortunes and massive increase in taxation of seven-figure incomes.

Capitalism has failed and must be ended. Socialism is the future. Vote for Kishore and White!

There is an ongoing effort by the Democratic Party targeting third-party tickets in the state. According to an article in the online publication Washington State Standard, the Democrats wrote a letter on August 9 challenging the ballot status of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claiming that the signatures collected are ineligible.

To successfully gather petitions in Washington, campaign law states that signatures must be gathered at specially announced “conventions” across the state, all of which must be attended by at least 100 registered voters.

While Kennedy’s campaign gathered 4,181 signatures, the Democrats argue that none were gathered at a formal “convention,” despite being announced as required by state law and posted on the campaign’s website, claiming that “simply gathering signatures does not constitute a convention.”

The Democrats’ challenge has no foundation in Washington state law. The Democrats have five days, of which Tuesday is the first, to submit a formal challenge to the state’s ruling, after which the state must answer the challenge within the next five days.

The Democratic Party is continuing its “war on third parties” to keep them off the ballot in other states. They, along with the Republicans and the corporate media, are determined to keep all other candidates, especially those expressing opposition to the policies of genocide and war agreed on by the two major parties.

Challenges have also been mounted against Cornel West in Michigan and North Carolina, and nearly all candidates in New York. The Democratic Party has also gone after West, Kennedy, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate Claudia de la Cruz in Georgia, claiming various administrative issues and technicalities to try to keep the four candidates off the ballot.