Maybe this is normal, but I just learned last week that in Washington, if a candidate has lost the open primary they cannot be a write in candidate.
Connecticut literally just throws out every write in vote. They provide the field, say nothing about it not counting, and then just throw your vote in the trash. If the Democrat got one vote, the republican got two votes, and every other vote was a write in for the same third party candidate, the Republican would win.
Really discourages sore loser spoilers. But if they would just switch to ranked choice that wouldn’t matter and you’d only need one election.
And if you want to be a write in candidate, you have to register as one. Everyone could decide to write you in at the last minute, but if you didn’t register, it won’t get counted.
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) won the general in a write-in campaign after an unexpected primary loss. But I guess I’m not sure if they have an open primary in Alaska, nor if that would really be the critical qualifier.