Louisiana’s legislature will probably pass HB 292 this year. It eliminates party nominees for Congressional elections. It says that all candidates for Congress would run in November on a single ballot, and all voters would use that ballot. If anyone gets 50% in November, that person is elected. Otherwise, there would be a run-off in December.

It’s not clear that the legislature will make the change effective this year. Bayou Buzz, a Louisiana politics blog, discusses the consequences for particular members of Congress if the bill takes effect this year. The existing system in Louisiana for congressional elections is a semi-closed primary system. When the semi-closed primary system was used in 2008 for the first time, two incumbent members of Congress were defeated for re-election.

Bayou Buzz also discusses the possibility that the U.S. Justice Department, Voting Rights Section, might not approve HB 292, or might not approve as applied to this year’s election.

The Texas petition deadline for new parties is May 24. Only one party submitted a petition, the Green Party. The party submitted 90,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 43,991. See this story.

This is only the second time that the Texas Green Party has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The first time was in 2000, and the party polled enough votes in 2000 so that it was automatically on the ballot as well in 2002. Parties in Texas must poll either 5% for any statewide race, or 2% for Governor. Parties that get 2% for Governor enjoy qualified status for the next four years, but parties that get 5% for any statewide race only gets qualified status for the next two years.

George Phillies, a candidate for national chair of the Libertarian Party, appears in this podcast, publicizing California’s Proposition 14 and also explaining how residents of any state are free to help make telephone calls to California voters. Independent Political Report has the podcast here.

Anyone who lives anywhere is free to contact Beau Cain, manager of the California Libertarian Party office, to participate, according to the podcast. Contact Beau at 877-884-1776.

The forces in favor of Proposition 14 have raised $4,700,000. They are running thousands of radio ads telling voters that “special interests” are opposed to Proposition 14. One hopes, radio listeners who have heard to pro-Proposition 14 ad innumerable times will wonder who is paying for the ads if the “special interests” are against Prop. 14.