The California Secretary of State has posted this unofficial list of candidates for the June 8, 2010 primary, for Congress and state office.

For the eight partisan statewide offices, each of the six ballot-qualified parties has someone running. The six ballot-qualified parties are Democratic, Republican, American Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Peace & Freedom.

For the 53 U.S. House races, Republicans are running someone in 52 districts, Democrats in 51, Libertarians in 21, American Independent in 7, Peace & Freedom in 7, and Green in 5. This is the largest number of AIP candidates for U.S. House in California since 1978, when there were eight.

All of the parties have contested primaries for Governor, except for the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party has a contested primary for the 59th Assembly district. Thanks to Ted Brown for the link.

On March 26, the South Carolina Democratic Party agreed to put Brian Doyle on its primary ballot as a candidate for U.S. House, 3rd district. Doyle, in the past, was convicted of a felony. On January 13, the party had said it would not let him file. Doyle had then sued the party, arguing that the U.S. Constitution does not permit the party to bar any candidate who is a member of the party and who meets the U.S. Constitutional requirements to be a member of Congress. The lawsuit had not yet reached any conclusion.

The party still hasn’t listed Doyle as a candidate on the party’s web page, but that may change.

On March 22, the New York Times printed this op-ed, in favor of “top-two” primary systems, written by former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling.

On March 27, the Times published three letters opposing “top-two”, which can be seen at this link. The three letters that are critical of the idea are from (1) Eric S. Maskin, a Nobel Laureate in Economics; (2) Linda Williams, chair of the Oregon Independent Party; (3) Rob Richie, chair of Fairvote. The Times, on the same day, carries two letters commenting on Thomas Friedman’s March 24 column in favor of Instant Runoff voting. Those two letters are from David A. Holtzman and Theresa Amato. The Amato letter mentions the need for ballot access reform.