Alaska releases updated information on the number of registered voters in each party every month. The August 4 tally is available here.

The only parties which gained between the July 3 tally and the August 3 tally are the Libertarian and Alaskan Independence Parties. The percentages are as follows, with the July tally listed first and the August tally second:

Republican: 26.08%, 26.06%
Democratic: 15.66%, 15.64%
Alaskan Indpc: 2.76%, 2.77%
Libertarian: 1.33%, 1.45%
Rep. Moderate: .65%, .64%
Green: .54%, .53%
Veterans: .38%, .38%
Independents: 52.61%, 52.54%

Parties need 9,786 registrants by the spring of 2010 in order to be recognized for the 2010 election. The only parties that have that many are Republican, Democratic and Alaskan Independence, although those three parties don’t actually need any number of registrants because all three of them met the alternate vote test in 2008. Libertarians currently have 6,956, so still need another 2,830. The formula to be on the ballot in a midterm year is to have registration of 3% of the last presidential vote. That formula was made more severe in 2004; before then, it was always 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. If that were still the registration test, the number of registrations needed would only be 7,119.

August 4 is the first day for Illinois residents who want to run for federal and state office in the 2010 primary to begin petitioning.

Illinois requires all candidates running in a partisan primary, for federal and state office, to submit petitions. Because the 2010 primary for all federal and state office is in February, petitions to get on a primary ballot ballot circulate from early August to early November of the year before the election. Illinois is the only state that has ever held its midterm year primary for Congress and state office as early as February. See this news story.

Many Illinois newspapers have editorialized that the state’s midterm primary date is ridiculously early, but the state’s legislators did not seriously consider moving it. Incumbents tend to feel that it is easier for them to get re-elected when the primary is very early.

On August 3, the Conservative Party in the British district of Totnes announced the results of its mail ballot open primary to select the party’s nominee for House of Commons in that district. Three candidates ran. Sarah Wollaston received 7,914; Sara Randall Johnson received 5,495; Nick Bye received 3,088.

This is the first time any British political party has used a mail ballot to all voters in the district to choose its nominee. The process cost the party 40,000 pounds. Other political parties have complained that only the Conservative Party could afford such a process. UPDATE: see this opinion piece by a Liberal Democrat activist.

The party leadership approved the nomination of each of the three candidates. Information about each of the three of them was included in the postal ballot mailing.