Louisiana elects its state officers in the odd years before presidential elections. However, in the fall of 2010, Louisiana will hold a special election to fill the vacancy in the Lieutenant Governorship. The office is vacant because the recent past Lieutenant Governor, Mitch Landrieu, resigned this month to become Mayor of New Orleans.
Effective in 2008, Louisiana changed its congressional elections from a top-two system, to a semi-closed primary system. The 2010 election will be the first time that Louisiana has held a special election to fill a statewide state office that is simultaneous with a congressional election. It may be awkward for the state to hold an election that uses one type of system for U.S. Senate, and an entirely different system for Lieutenant Governor. Details on how the state will handle this are not available on Tuesday, February 16, because state offices are closed for Mardi Gras.
Whenever Louisiana has a choice in the matter, it holds elections on Saturdays, so I’m assuming that the special election for lieutenant governor will be held at a different time from the general election for Congress.
As to Louisiana’s party primaries for Congress: The Democrats invite independents to vote in their primaries, while the Republicans do not.
The most interesting dynamic here is that Bobby Jindal, the Governor, wants to eliminate the office of Lieutenant Governor.
New Age party hacks exist apparently to create chaos — in voting systems, in the economy, etc.
P.R. and nonpartisan A.V.
The party primaries for Congress will be held on Saturday, August 28.
The party runoff (or second) primaries for Congress will be held on Saturday, October 2. The first round of the nonpartisan lieutenant governor’s election will evidently also be held on October 2 (the chart on the secretary of state’s website calls this the “open primary”).
The general election for Congress will be on November 2. The runoff for lieutenant governor, if necessary, will also be held on November 2 (the SOS’s chart calls this the “open general”).
Maybe there will be an injunction against Louisiana’s unconstitutional method of congressional and senatorial elections and they will have to go back to the reliable open primary.
In other words, you’re saying that 49 states use an “unconstitutional” method of conducting their congressional elections???
#6 AFAIK, all other 49 states use the same qualification for voting in legislative elections as they do in congressional elections.
Louisiana did until 2008 when they changed their method of conducting congressional elections, and started deploying the lockout device which the elections judges manipulate to disenfranchise certain voters based on their political beliefs.
You could make a case that Virginia often violates this standard, as that state’s major parties choose their congressional nominees by convention most of the time. On the other hand, the parties usually nominate state legislators by primary.
So a voter might be able to vote directly to nominate his state legislator in a primary, whereas that same voter might only be able to vote for a convention delegate to nominate his US representative or US senator.