Filing has closed for candidates to put themselves on California primary ballots. The primary is June 3. California has 53 U.S. House districts.

All six qualified parties in California will have fewer nominees for U.S. House in 2008 than they did in 2006, except that the Republican Party has the same number in both years. Below is the number of districts in which each party will have a nominee, in 2008; the 2006 number is in parantheses.

Democratic: 51 (52)
Republican: 46 (46)
Libertarian: 20 (25)
Green: 5 (7)
Peace & Freedom: 5 (8)
Constitution: 1 (2)

In theory, the parties could gain nominees by write-ins at the primary, but the law requires a write-in candidate in a partisan primary to poll a large number of votes, in order to be deemed nominated. Even the major parties have trouble with that requirement; no Republican or Democratic was able to gain a write-in nomination in 2006 for U.S. House.

This column by Benjamin Lukoff suggests that Washington voters, when faced with the restrictive choices on the November ballot caused by the recently revived “Top-Two” Primary system, may now be attracted to abolishing the primary in favor of Instant-Runoff Voting in November. Thanks to Steve Rankin for the link.

On March 27, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) addressed the Florida State Senate. He chose to use his speech to advocate for several election law changes. Concerning the presidential primary process, he proposed a national agreement for rotating regional primaries. He also again advocated that the Democratic National Committee agree to seat half of Florida’s delegation.

Concerning the electoral college, he seemed to endorse the National Popular Vote Plan for ending the possibility that the person who places 2nd in the national popular vote could still be declared the winner.

He also advocated no-excuse absentee voting, mail voting, and experimentation with internet voting.