On November 3, the Ohio House was called back into session to vote on HB 369, a new set of U.S. House district boundaries. Ohio Republican House members, who have a majority but less than two-thirds of the membership of the House, had hoped the new plan would attract a two-thirds “aye” vote. The new maps were designed to increase the number of districts with a substantial majority of black voters. Republicans hoped enough black state house Democrats would vote for the bill. If HB 369 could pass with a two-thirds majority in each house, it would go into effect immediately and would not be subject to referendum.

However, HB 369 did not pass. See this story. The story does not specifically say that the bill didn’t pass, but, in reality, it didn’t pass. If it were to pass, then Ohio could have its presidential primary and its U.S. House primary in March instead of on June 12. But as it stands now, the presidential primary and U.S. House primary will be in June, even though the primary for U.S. Senate and state legislature will be in March. The reason the presidential primary must be in June is that Ohio presidential primaries elect delegates to national conventions from each U.S. House district, and so if the U.S. House district boundaries aren’t known, the presidential primary can’t go forward.

The November 3 Arizona Republic, the daily newspaper for Phoenix, has this editorial about the Republican majority in the Senate’s removal of the chair of the Redistricting Commission. The Commission has 5 members, and the Senate and the Governor removed the only independent member. Supporters of the Commission charge that due process was not followed, and the matter will end up in court.

On November 2, California elections officials completed their random sample check of the Americans Elect petition to be a qualified party. Americans Elect had submitted 1,621,318 signatures to meet a requirement of 1,030,040 valid signatures. The random sample shows that the petition has a 69.55% validity rate, and that the petition has 1,127,634 valid signatures.

However, California Election code section 9031(a) says that when a statewide initiative petition random sample shows that the number of valid signatures is less than 110% of the legal requirement, then the elections officials can’t use the results of the random sample, and must check every signature. The process of checking every signature will be expensive for elections officials. The job must be done in six weeks, starting today. The Secretary of State applies the initiative random sample rules to petitions to qualify new parties.

Americans Elect is free to submit more signatures, although it almost certainly doesn’t feel the need to do so. A statistician would say that any petition as large as this one, with a random sample validity of 109.5% of the requirement, is overwhelmingly likely to be valid.

This instance shows that excessively difficult ballot access is bad for election administrators and taxpayers, as well as bad for parties and candidates.