Posted on 01/10/2012 1:13:33 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
No Virginia ballots should be ordered or mailed to absentee voters until a federal judge decides which Republican presidential candidates will be on the state's primary ballot.
That temporary order was made Monday by District Judge John A. Gibney Jr., who will make a final decision Friday, Jan. 13, said Joseph Nixon, the lead counsel for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Perry filed a lawsuit last month against Virginia's State Board of Elections after he didn't get enough signatures to get on the March 6 primary ballot.
Only two Republican candidates did: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
Last week, other GOP hopefuls Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman joined Perry's lawsuit challenging the Virginia's strict ballot access law that required candidates get 10,000 qualified signatures of support by Dec. 22.
In a complaint filed Dec. 27, Perry said his Constitutional rights to freedoms of speech and association were violated by the state's electoral requirements. He asked to be reinstated on the ballot.
However, in a Jan. 3 court filing, Virginia's office of the attorney general wrote that Perry "lacks standing to assert an injury arising from the inability to circulate his own petitions because there is no averment that he stood ready, willing and able to circulate his own petitions and there is no basis for concluding that he would have collected a sufficient number of valid signatures."
Perry begs to differ. On Friday he will call three witnesses to testify on his behalf at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond. They include Joe Allbaugh, a senior adviser for his campaign; Neal Blair, who helped coordinate the campaign's efforts to get on the Virginia ballot; and Jerry Kilgore, a former attorney general for Virginia who will testify about the faults of the state's ballot access requirements
In the meantime, Virginia's State Board of Elections is making back-up plans should the judge decide to allow more candidates on the ballot, said Justin Reimer, the board's deputy secretary.
It takes several weeks to proof, design, and print ballots, said Reimer, and federal law requires absentee ballots be mailed 45 days prior to the election. That means January 21 is the make-or-break deadline for the March 6 primary.
This will be a challenging deadline to make, considering Monday's ruling to delay absentee ballot distribution but, Reimer said, "We're doing the best we can."
Good news.
No insult to Perry, I think he’s staying on just to get this finished...which means he’s a better conservative then many think of him (on here). I will never talk ill of people who are closer to my views....Romney, Paul and Huntsman are a different thing.
My respects to Perry for doing such.
People advocating state’s rights are getting a federal judge to rule on a state law?
The appeals court overturned a federal judge's decision to block the law. The ultrasound requirements do not infringe on abortion providers' free speech rights, it said.
"The required disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information," Chief Judge Edith Jones wrote for the three-judge panel."...
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Virginia appealed the order.
I think the judge will be backed up though.
There’s “a strong likelihood that the Court will find the residency requirement for petition circulators to be unconstitutional”.
What relief can the court grant but to let all officially declared candidates on the ballot?
Heck, maybe we could do it in 4 minutes. Here's first cut:
For the GOP nomination for President of the United States, please vote for only one of the following:Seriously, it takes them "several weeks"? Typical government crap.[ ] - Mitt Romney [ ] - Ron Paul [ ] - Newt Gingrich [ ] - Rick Perry [ ] - Rick Santorum
Hell, give me another 4 minutes, and I could look up the spelling for Buddy Roemer.
[Federal] Judge Prevents VA from Printing Ballots Until Perry Hearing
As I have been arguing in my e-mails to my state representatives....
This is not a state election. It LOOKS like a state election, and a state has some say in how it is run. But Virginia can’t “pick the candidates” for the republican presidential nomination. Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich are all candidates, with or without Virginia. Virginia’s law is meant to winnow out candidates so we have a clear choice.
But they haven’t winnowed anything, because they don’t control the process. It’s national. All they are doing is keeping VIRGINIANS from having a choice of ALL the candidates who are in the race.
Said Another Way: In a state contest, if the people aren’t on the ballot, they aren’t candidates. Sure, it might restrict my right to vote for “whoever I want”, but I get to vote for all the people who could possibly win the election I am voting for.
But in this case, it is likely that Gingrich or Santorum will actually WIN the nomination. By restricting the ballot, they aren’t restricting the number of candidates I have to choose, they are restricting my ability to vote for all the candidates available. They are throwing the election to two of the many available candidates.
It is a basic flaw in applying the state rules to a federal election. It would be like requiring candidates for governor to separately qualify in each county in Virginia. Imagine if each county had a different list, and nobody had a choice of ALL the candidates? What kind of election is that?
There is no real purpose served here. If you want to argue that not getting signatures “proves something” about these candidates — that argument is available. People might choose not to vote for them. Maybe we could mark the candidate names to indicate which are on the ballot through the official method, or maybe Romney can run ads explaining it.
But that’s for the voters to decide, whether they see not collecting signatures makes a candidate unworthy of their support. The Virginia rules don’t punish the candidates (49 votes won’t make or break them), they only punish the voters, who lose their choice in a presidential election.
This isn’t a game, and frankly the legislature should step up and fix this with emergency legislation. I’ve written all my representatives to do just that.
BTW, I’m late to this game — some will remember I defended the RPV on this matter. I still do — it’s not their fault, it’s just a stupid law that nobody thought through because it’s always been “worked around” before.
Perry and Newt are fighters. I like that.
I think in this case it’s more a matter of just not having all their ducks in a row. That tells people something about.
I think in this case it’s more a matter of just not having all their ducks in a row. That tells people something about.
Thanks shield.
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