Candidates continue to turn in paperwork to county elections offices and the Secretary of State today, although Tuesday traditionally is one of the lightest days of filing week.

The big rush on Monday be candidates who either want to be first or don't want to forget is followed by a few days of candidates who are setting up campaign events around the turning in of paper work and those who are fitting it into a busy schedule.

Beyond the names -- some familiar, some not -- a curious thing is happening with the "party preference" part of the forms. Just as in 2008, some "Rs" are filing as preferring the Republican Party and others are filing as preferring the GOP Party. (Yes, that's a redundancy because the P in GOP stands for Party, but don't complain to me, complain to them.)

On the other side of the aisle, some "Ds" are filing as preferring the Democratic Party, while others are filing as preferring the Democrat Party. It would seem that all these years of Republicans stressing the word without the -ic as a slur has finally seeped into the subconscious of the other side, and now some Democrats don't know their nouns from their adjectives, either.

There's a smattering of Green, Independent and No Party preferences. But a few candidates are just having fun with the party preference line. Tim Sutinene says he Prefers Lower Taxes Party (wouldn't we all?). Leslie Klein of Seattle Prefers (R) Problem fixer Party. Jon T. Haugen of Vancouver wrote he "Prefers Neither Party".

And for the readers wondering if "Goodspaceguy" is the real name of a candidate running for the U.S. Senate. Yes, it is. He previously went by Mike Nelson, Mike Goodspaceguy Nelson or Goodspaceguy Nelson. One of his main campaign planks is to colonize orbital space.

He runs for something just about every year, including King County executive last year, the U.S. House in 2008 , the U.S. Senate in 2006 and governor in 2004. Part of this year's campaign strategy appears to be slimming down to a single name.

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