The Federal Election Commission has compiled a chart, showing congressional primary dates, presidential primary dates, and dates of major party presidential caucuses. See it here. It was correct as of October 24, 2011. There have been a handful of changes since then, so probably the FEC will prepare an updated chart later. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
This Roll Call article says that the failure of the Ohio legislature to advance HB 369 this week means that the state will indeed hold its presidential primary and its primary for U.S. House on June 12. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
As mentioned earlier, on November 1, the Ohio Secretary of State put five minor parties on the ballot for 2012, even though none of them had satisfied the statutory requirement for a petition. The Columbus Dispatch, daily newspaper of Ohio’s capital city, reported this news on November 5. Thanks to Steve Linnabary for the link.
The Louisiana Secretary of State posts new voter registration totals on his web page every month, but those statistics never include any parties except the Democratic and Republican Parties, even though Louisiana has five qualified parties. However, on November 3, his office issued a report that shows how many registered voters there are in each party, including even the unqualified parties.
The new totals, converted to percentages, for the five qualified parties, are: Democratic 49.44%; Republican 26.89%; Libertarian .17%; Reform .05%; Green .05%. Independent voters, plus those registered in unqualified parties, equal 23.41%.
A year ago, the percentages were: Democratic 50.62%; Republican 26.21%; Libertarian .13%; Reform .05%; Green .04%; independents plus miscellaneous 22.95%.
The monthly totals for the two major parties show that the Democratic Party dipped below 50% of all registered voters for the first time at the June 1, 2011 tally, and has continued to make very slow declines since then.
A party becomes ballot-qualified when its registration reaches at least 1,000, and also when it submits a list of its officers, its bylaws, and a fee of $1,000. The only three unqualified parties that are organized, and that have even 50 registrants, are the Conservative Party with 396 registrants, the Constitution Party with 137 registrants, and the Socialist Party with 62 registrants. Thanks to Randall Hayes, who obtained the full registration report.
Freakonomics has this story about Instant Runoff Voting, with an emphasis on the Portland, Maine Mayoral election of November 8, 2011. The story shows the ballot, which allows voters to rank as many candidates as they wish. The election has 15 candidates, including two Green Party members (the election is non-partisan).
