Michael Noe has been kept off the Alabama ballot as an independent candidate for Madison County Commission, because elections officials say he doesn’t have enough valid signatures on his petition. See this story. The story also reveals that election officials are unable to know exactly how many signatures are required. The law says he needs 3% of the votes cast within the district for Governor in 2010. However, because redistricting has occurred since 2010, no one knows exactly how many votes were cast in the territory contained in the new district. The new district boundaries split precincts.

So, election officials simply divided the number of votes cast for Governor in 2010 in the entire county by the number of County Commission districts, and just assume Noe’s district had an “average” number of votes cast in 2010.