Ballotpedia has issued this report on competition in U.S. elections for state and federal office. There are so many fascinating and important conclusions, it would be a disservice to readers to try to single out any particular findings. The report shows that U.S. state legislative elections in particular are massively uncompetitive, in both primaries and general elections.

Never before has any group or individual accumulated and published this much data about legislative election returns. The report required the authors to collect and analyze the election returns for all legislative districts, in both primaries and general elections, for the last 42 years. In every even-numbered year, there are always more than 6,000 legislative races.

On May 6, the Oklahoma House passed HB 2181 by 83-0. It had passed the House on March 10, and had passed the Senate on April 22. But the Senate version was different than the House version, so it had to return to the House to see if the House agreed with the Senate amendments. Now the bill goes to Governor Mary Fallin, who is in her second term.

Assuming she signs it, Oklahoma will require 24,745 signatures for a newly-qualifying party for both 2016 and 2018. Without the bill, the 2016 requirement would have been 41,242. The 2014 requirement was 66,744. The new formula will be 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, whereas the old law is 5% of the last vote cast. Under the old law, the requirement skyrockets for midterm years and is lower in presidential years; this is the “see-saw” effect, but the new bill eliminates it.

UPDATE: here is a video of the House action, which lasts about 5 minutes. It consists of the author of the bill telling the House that he urges that the bill as amended by the Senate be passed by the House. He regrets that the Senate tripled the number of signatures, relative to the original bill, but says that is the best deal he can get. He also said that he would consider a bill in the next session to lower the number of signatures. Thanks to Rick Kissell for the link.

On May 5, Alberta held an election for the provincial legislature. For the first time, the New Democratic Party won a majority in that body. See this story. The Alberta government been controlled by the Social Credit Party 1935-1971 and by the Progressive Conservative Party ever since, until today’s election. Thanks to Rick Kissell for the link.