Bialota Challenges Petition, Falls Far Short of Booting Jackley from Ballot

Last updated on 2026-04-30

Republican candidate for U.S. House James Bialota has threatened to make a citizen’s arrest of his primary opponent, Attorney General Marty Jackley, for some vague notion of committing government fraud. But Bialota can’t even find enough evidence to disqualify Jackley’s nominating petition.

In challenging Jackley’s petition, Bialota had a high hill to climb. The SOS originally calculated from her random sample of 612 signatures of Jackley’s roughly 3,650-signature submission that Jackley had 3,168 valid signatures, well above the 2,171 good signatures Republican candidates need to make the statewide primary ballot. Jackley could afford to lose another 166 signatures from his random sample and still qualify for the ballot.

Bialota flagged only seven signatures that the Secretary of State announced Friday she was willing to disqualify from the random sample. Losing those seven random-sample signatures reduced Jackley’s calculated total signatures to 3,126 and his validity rate from 86.70% to 85.6%. Bialota needed to knock Jackley’s validity rate down to 59.3% to succeed. Jackley thus remains on the primary ballot, above Bialota’s name as determined by the Secretary’s draw for ballot order last week.

Bialota has not mentioned his unsuccessful challenge on his campaign FB. But maybe now that his petition challenge has failed, he’ll follow up on his threat to make a citizen’s arrest. Now that would make for some great Youtube.