Massachusetts has three ballot-qualified parties, Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian. Massachusetts is holding a special primary for U.S. Senate on December 8, 2009. No one qualified for the Libertarian Party primary, but election officials were forced by state law to print up Libertarian Party primary ballots anyway. See this story.

In theory, Libertarian registrants, and independents (who are permitted to choose the Libertarian primary ballot) could write-in someone. But, state law says no one can be nominated at a primary unless he or she polls a number of write-ins equal to 10% of the party’s registration (or, alternatively, a number of write-ins equal to the number of signatures needed to get on the primary ballot, whichever is less). Thus, anyone who wanted the Libertarian nomination would need approximately 1,300 write-ins. UPDATE: the original post contains an error. The part of the law letting Libertarians nominate someone by write-in vote is worse than originally described. Anyone winning the Libertarian nomination would have needed 10,000 write-ins.

No Libertarian qualified to get on the Libertarian primary ballot because that would have taken 10,000 signatures, and only registered Libertarians, and registered independents, may sign. Instead, a Libertarian Party dues-paying member who is a registered independent, Joseph Kennedy, qualified as an independent candidate for the special general election, which will be on January 19, 2010. Kennedy needed 10,000 signatures to qualify for the January election, but any registered voter was free to sign.

Massachusetts does not require write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy, except for President. Therefore, in theory, any person who wanted the Libertarian nomination could have been conducting a write-in campaign beneath the radar of the Libertarian Party, and even beneath the radar of the media. However, it is very unlikely that anyone is actually doing this.

The Democratic primary ballot as four candidates, and the Republican primary ballot has two candidates.

On December 4, the California Secretary of State certified vote-counting equipment that is already being used in Alameda County, California, for the purpose of letting the city of Oakland use Instant Runoff Voting for its own city elections. See this story. The voters of Oakland voted to use IRV in 2006, so they have been waiting a long time. There will now be only one round of city elections in Oakland, to be held in November 2010.

Only charter cities in California may use IRV for their own elections. But, Oakland is a charter city.