Becky Morton wrote:

I haven't seen all the thread on the proposed change in the CA primary.  But in LA (Louisiana)'s nonpartisan elections, party labels DO appear on the ballots.  I.e. you can look at the sample ballots online at the state board of elections site for the upc
oming runoff election and Landrieux is clearly designated as a Democrat and her opponent as a Republican.  It is important to note that in LA there is no primary per se, but a general election with a majority requirement.  Recognition of this fact is why the Supreme Court ruled in Foster v. Love that LA congressional first stage elections could not be held in advance of the federal election day since in many cases incumbents won reelection and led to decisions in advance of the federally mandated congress
ional election day.  So it is not unusual for a nonpartisan election to allow for party affiliations to appear on the ballot.  In LA parties can endorse candidates (and do), but sometimes there is disagreement (in the recent!
Senate race Bush and Foster, the repub governor, endorsed different republicans) and party endorsements are not required for a candidate to run under a party label as repubs discovered with David Duke.
The nonpartisan election system with a majority requirement means that party leaders have less need to coordinate in advance on an endorsement, i.e. Bush and Foster's duelling endorsements meant that the election itself determined which repub faces Landri
eux in the primary and they didn't have to agree on a single candidate.  Liz Gerber, Tom Rietz, and I have another paper on how majority requirements can work as coordination mechanisms when a sizeable group of voters are divided in their preferences betw
een two similar candidates and vote sincerely for their first preferences while in a simple plurality rule system some of the voters would be forced to vote strategically and coordinate on a common preference (this paper has a theoretical model with exper
imental evidence on voting in simple elections).
Becky