Ohio has an open primary. The voter registration form does not ask voters to choose a party. On primary day, any voter is free to choose any party’s primary ballot.
In the March 2012 primary, 7,035 Ohio voters chose a Libertarian primary ballot, even though that ballot had no one listed for president, and no one listed for U.S. Senate. President and U.S. Senate are the only two statewide partisan races up in Ohio this year.
Recently, the Ohio Libertarian Party went to the trouble of checking to see which primary ballot those voters had chosen in 2010. The results: 2,797 of the 2012 Libertarian primary voters had not voted in the 2010 primary. 2,987 of the 2012 Libertarian primary voters had also chosen the Libertarian primary ballot in 2010. Also, among the remaining 2012 Libertarian primary voters, 391 had chosen the Republican primary ballot in 2010; 388 had chosen the Democratic primary ballot in 2010; 37 had chosen the Constitution Party primary ballot in 2010; five had chosen the Green Party primary ballot in 2010; 3 had chosen the Socialist Party primary ballot in 2010; and 427 had chosen the non-partisan primary ballot in 2010.
This demonstrates that a system such as that used in Texas, where party qualification and nomination are concurrent would be workable. This would get Ohio and the Libertarian Party out of the stale recycling of trying to force parties to nominate by primary, which in turn forces qualification prior to an early primary.
Ballot qualification would be based on participation in the nominating activities of the party. No party, including the Democratic and Republican parties, would be automatically qualified, but would qualify based on voters actually participating in the primaries, conventions, or signing the petition for the party (let’s say 1% of total participants). 1.97 million persons voted in the primary, so the qualifying standard would be 19,700 registered voters.
Since the State of Ohio administers the primaries, and non-partisan races are included, it should be feasible to let voters affiliate with the Libertarian or some other party, and hand them a non-partisan ballot, and time and place of an entry-level nominating convention.
When a voter attends a nominating convention, or signs a supplemental petition, he affiliates with the party, just as he does by voting in a primary.
So if the Libertarian Party could get 7000 voters to vote in a non-primary-primary, they should be able to get as many to go to the polls and declare their affiliation and vote in the non-partisan primary. They could then supplement this by convention participation or petition signing among the 6 million Ohio voters who did not vote in the primary.
Since voter registrations are tied to residence, it would also be feasible to tie qualification to districts, so that even a party was not state-qualified candidates in some counties or districts could be.