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.