On February 18, James Hedges, a long-time activist in the Prohibition Party, declared his candidacy for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. He is the only person who has won a partisan election as a Prohibition Party nominee in the last 50 years. He was elected Assessor of Thompson Township, Fulton County, Pennsylvania, in 2001, and re-elected in 2005.

The Prohibition Party is ballot-qualified in one state, Florida. Hedges is 71 and lives in Big Cove Tannery, Pennsylvania, in Fulton County. He has been active in local government and in civic groups, and was once a member of the United States Marine Band in Washington, D.C.

The February 20 issue of the Columbus Dispatch has this story about the Libertarian Party’s 2010 campaign in Ohio. This is the first year that the Libertarian Party has been on the ballot in a mid-term year in Ohio, as a party, since 1982.

The story does not mention the other ballot-qualified minor parties in Ohio this year, which are Constitution, Green, and Socialist. Ohio has never before had six ballot-qualified parties with their own primary. The highest number of parties with their own primary in the past has been four.

Three Rhode Island Democratic Senators have introduced SB 2150. It requires political parties to let independent voters vote in their primaries. The authors are Leonidas Raptakis, Marc Cote, and Michael Pinga. Some leaders of the Republican Party have been thinking about excluding independents from the Republican primary. The existing law is vague about whether parties can exclude independents.