Nick Gartelos, an independent candidate for the Missouri State Senate, is now safely on the November ballot, but only because he caught an error in the state’s determination of how many signatures he needed.  See this story.  Independent candidates for district office in Missouri need a petition of 2% of the last vote cast for that office.  The Secretary of State forgot that State Senate seat had been most recently filled in a special election.  She calculated 2% on the last regularly-scheduled election for that seat, but the candidate noticed the error.

This story is somewhat similar to the method by which former Congressman Jim Traficant got on the Ohio general election ballot this year as an independent candidate.  He had to contest the calculation of how many signatures were legally required.  Ohio elections officials had initially miscalculated the required number of signatures.