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.

On August 3, the founder of the California Moderate Party, Ash Roughani, announced that the party will not attempt to qualify for the 2010 ballot, although suggesting that it might make the attempt for 2012.

On August 4, the Moderate Party submitted its petition to become a qualified party. See this story. The party turned in almost 34,000 signatures, to meet a requirement of 23,589. Assuming the petition is valid, this will be the first time any group has become a qualified party in Rhode Island via the petition method. The petition procedure to create a new party has only existed since 1994.

In the past, groups became qualified parties by the alternate method of running a candidate for Governor or President under the independent procedures, using a party label, and if that candidate polled 5%, the group became a qualified party. This is the method used by the Green Party (Ralph Nader polled over 5% in 2000), which enjoyed qualified status through the 2004 election.