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.

On April 27, the Texas Supreme Court asked for a response from El Paso Mayor John F. Cook, in the case known as Tom Brown Ministries v Cook, 12-0224. The issue is whether a recall petition should be invalidated, even though it had enough valid signatures, because the church that helped collect the signatures is incorporated. The State Appeals Court had invalidated the petition based on the church’s status as a corporation. The Mayor’s response is due May 29.

The issues in this case are closely related to the same issues from 2010, when the Green Party petition was invalidated by a lower Texas state court because it was believed that the money donated to the party for its petition drive originated from a corporation. The Texas Supreme Court, in the Green Party case, put the party back on the ballot. No further proceedings were held in that case because, after the election was over, the Texas Democratic Party, which had originally filed the challenge to the Green Party petition, did not pursue the case.

The Colorado primary is June 26. El Paso County election officials decided not to print up any primary ballots for the Democratic Party or the American Constitution Party, because those two parties have no primary contests within the boundaries of the county. But the Colorado Secretary of State believes each county must print up primary ballots for all three parties that are entitled to nominate by primary. See this story. The Secretary of State apparently will sue the county to get a judicial decision on this issue.

El Paso County is a populous county that contains Colorado Springs.