Today's First Loser: The Libertarian Party of Washington 

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee tossed out the Libertarians' effort (and a prayer of hopeful Democrats), to keep GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney off the ballot.

The Libertarians argued that the Republicans hadn't met the rules to establish major party status because they didn't have a  "nominated" GOP senate candidate who got the five percent vote threshold in the 2010 election; that year's Republican senate candidate, Dino Rossi, was locked in an intramural battle with Tea Party candidate Clint Didier and so wasn't formally nominated at the party convention.

However, the judge, siding with the Washington Secretary of State's office, ruled that the 2008 voter-approved top-two primary system rendered the threshold argument irrelevant; the statute, the judge said, was a remnant of the old "pick-a-party primary," where voters were forced to choose a party and only vote for candidates from that party's slate.

Washington State Republican Party Chair Kirby Wilbur belittled the Libertarians in a statement after the ruling:

This lawsuit ... has been nothing more than a nuisance and a waste of time ... and I am pleased that the judge so easily saw that today. Bitter acts like this are why no one takes the Libertarian Party seriously.