The Ohio Libertarian Party now has approximately 81,000 signatures on its 2018 petition for party status. This is the largest number of signatures any minor party has collected in any state (not counting Americans Elect) since 2008, when the North Carolina Libertarians collected slightly over 100,000 signatures.

The Ohio drive needs 54,965 valid signatures. Ohio does not permit a party to submit a partial petition; all the signatures must be submitted in one turn-in. The party has been checking the validity of its petition and believes that it has almost 50,000 valid.

Assuming the Ohio Libertarian petition succeeds, this will be the first time that any group has completed the Ohio party petition since 2000, when both the Libertarian and Natural Law Parties did that petition. That year, 33,543 valid signatures were needed.

On January 24, the Florida House unanimously passed CS/HM 147, expressing support for statehood for Puerto Rico. It now goes to the State Senate. The resolution doesn’t use the word “statehood” but it seems capable of no other interpretation.

Philadelphia held a special election last year to fill the vacancy in the 197th State House seat. Although this is normally a Democratic stronghold, in this election, the only candidate who was on the ballot was the Republican nominee. The Democratic Party backed a write-in candidate; also a very strong Green candidate, Cheri Honkkala, was a write-in candidate.

Criminal charges have been lodged against some of the officials who served at the polls as election officials. See this story about some of the evidence.