Now that the Pennsylvania petition requirement for 2012 is known (see post immediately below), it is possible to know almost exactly that the national petition total for a presidential candidate to get on all 51 ballots in 2012 will be 708,482 signatures. This calculation involves using the easier method to get on the ballot in each state. The total isn’t quite exact yet and depends on estimates for Delaware and the District of Columbia. The number from Delaware is based on how many people are registered to vote as of December 31, 2011, which lies in the future. And the D.C. requirement depends on the number of registered voters as of July 1, 2012. But these registration totals can be estimated now.

The 708,482 figure is 6.2% higher than the 2008 total, which was 667,248.

Sometimes, the “easier” method in each state is somewhat ambiguous. For California, which has three methods, the easiest method is deemed to be the independent candidate petition, which requires 172,859 valid signatures. It seems apparent that it is easier to get 172,859 petition signatures than to get 103,004 registrations, and it is obviously easier to get 172,859 signatures than 1,030,040 signatures. For Delaware, the assumption is that it is easier to get 650 registrations than to get 6,500 signatures. For Ohio, even though five parties were placed on the ballot by the Secretary of State with no petition, the calculation assumes it is easier to get 5,000 signatures than to persuade the Secretary of State to recognize any more parties. For Vermont and Mississippi, the calculation assumes it is easier to provide a list of state party officers, than to obtain 1,000 signatures.

The press in the United States has for months been reporting that it takes 2,900,000 signatures to get on the ballot for President in all 51 jurisdictions. Reporters confuse the number of signatures that Americans Elect says it plans to collect, with the actual legal requirements. Americans Elect is not using the easier method in each state.

Just six states account for 61.6% of the entire national requirement. The six states are California, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, and Indiana. There is a possibility that North Carolina, which requires the second greatest number of signatures of any state, will improve its law in the 2012 legislative session in time to effect the 2012 election.