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.

Dan Walters, the Sacramento Bee’s veteran politics reporter and columnist, writes here that it would be good policy to repeal limits on how much individuals may contribute to candidates. AB 1146, which has a hearing in the Senate Elections Committee on July 3, would repeal limits on how much individuals may contribute to candidates for state and local office. Instead, all contributions above $200 would need to be reported within 24 hours.

AB 1146 was introduced last year, and originally it merely doubled from $100 to $200 the amount of money that may be contributed without having to be reported. In that form, the bill passed the Assembly. Now that it has been revamped, it needs to pass both houses.

The Libertarian Party national web page now has a list of Libertarian Party candidates in the November 2012 election. See it here. This list will grow. In some states the time for the party to nominate candidates is still in the future.

The list mentions some California candidates for partisan office, but all of those candidates are barred from running in November because they failed to place first or second in the June 5 primary.

The state with the most Libertarian candidates so far is Texas.