Posted on 12/22/2011 6:01:17 PM PST by CharlesWayneCT
Four Republican presidential candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Ron Paul -- submitted paper work in time to qualify for Virginia's March 6 primary ballot.
No other GOP contender will be on the Virginia ballot. Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman did not submit signatures with Virginia's State Board of Elections by today's 5 p.m. deadline.
...
Candidates must submit the signatures of at least 10,000 registered voters, with 400 from each of the 11 Congressional districts.
Romney submitted 16,026 signatures; Paul 14,361; Perry 11,911 and Gingrich 11,050.
The state GOP decided that candidates who submit at least 15,000 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions with at least 600 signatures from each of the 11 districts will be deemed to have met the qualifications.
The parties have until Tuesday at 5 p.m. to tell the State Board of Elections which candidates qualify for the March 6 primary ballot. The order of names will be decided by lottery on Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.timesdispatch.com ...
Perry didn't have a whole lot more, which is dissappointing because I wrote him several times offering to also collect signatures and sign -- if he misses by 3 signatures in the 11th district, he's only got himself to blame.
Paul was obviously going to get signatures, because he has minions everywhere. Don't know why he didn't make 15,000.
Romney is already "qualified", because with 15,000 signatures the RPV won't waste time counting.
My job of picking a candidate just got a LOT easier. Two of the three I was considering didn't bother to qualify for the ballot in my state. I wrote them also and they never got back to me.
So Tuesday, I'll know who is on my ballot, and I'll pick "my candidate".
Meanwhile, I call on Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann, (sadly), to drop out and allow their supporters to move to a good conservative candidate who actually is interested in RUNNING for President, instead of just campaigning.
Sorry, you two -- you showed no interest in my vote, why should I give it to you?
Too bad she wasn't serious enough to get on the ballot.
It appears that the GOP party has been narrowed to four choices. God help us!
> “I wrote Gingrich offering help and to sign petitions, and they never got back to me.” <
> “My job of picking a candidate just got a LOT easier. Two of the three I was considering didn’t bother to qualify for the ballot in my state. I wrote them also and they never got back to me.” <
Do you ever get the idea the whole thing may be a fix? The whole disinterest on the part of the candidates to your offer, the obvious disinterest of the RNC and the Senate leadership just make me wonder “is this all there is”? Experience is Newt’s long suit, so why wouldn’t he employ the finest response team around to recieve voters calls and letters to volunteer?
I believe Bachman and Santorum are simply financially finished and quite void of any staff at all. By now, they may both be highly in debt. They do need to throw in the towel before they are caricatured as hopeless spoilers to conservatives chances for a non-Romney.
Then it states that candidates presenting 15,000 with 600 from each district will be “deemed”(like the dems were going to deem the health care bill passed?)to have met the requirements.
Only Romney presented 15,000 or more. Does this mean that he qualifies without scrutiny? Will the Pubbies toss out so many signatures that none of the others will qualify?
Tell me what you think or know about it.
Newt doesn't have enough money right now to operate as well as he could, and probably not enough for sufficient monitoring and legal challenge should he need it either.
Perry and Paul on the other hand probably have the funds to do whatever they need to.
Almost every election I’ve watched since 1960 has been a “fix” somewhere along the line.
I do suspect that after Reagan pulled off his coup, the establishment kingmakers have always made sure to fund enough conservatives to keep the conservative vote split, so that their pick can win.
These kingmakers will do whatever it takes to retain power.
Yes, that’s what it means. Virginia law puts the ballot qualification process squarely in the hands of the RPV (republican party of virginia). They can qualify ballots any way they like.
And one of their rules is that if you exceed the legal requirements by 50%, they figure you must have enough valid signatures, and they won’t bother checking.
BTW, they have been asking for volunteers to go to Richmond tomorrow for a full day of counting. They want to be done before Christmas. So all those ballots are going to be checked in a single day.
Thus, I agree with Larry Sabato, who said he doubts Gingrich or Perry will be bumped. The RPV doesn’t have to bump them, and they won’t want to.
Ok. Thanks for the clarification.
This is why we need a strong conservative 3rd party.
The law requires 10,000 signatures. The RPV is responsible under the law for verifying the signatures. The RPV has adopted a rule that if a candidate turns in 15,000 signatures (50% over the required value), the RPV will assume enough are valid to meet the 10,000 threshold, so they will not check the signatures.
Therefore, Romney is already qualified for the ballot. The other three candidates need to have their petitions verified.
There is a marathon verification session tomorrow, they’ve been requesting volunteers. One day, and they will be done because they aren’t sticking around over Christmas.
It’s not expected that any of the candidates will be eliminated. RPV has no reason to do so. Unless there is something clearly amiss on a bunch of petitions, they’ll likely accept them as valid.
I guess Perry should have just signed his own name 15,000 times then.
I’m guessing they could have caught that pretty easily.
I’ll never understand how a candidate can mess up something so trivial. The only thing I’ll say on Perry’s behalf is that at least he put the right TASK to his team here, to get 10000 signatures. But that doesn’t help if you don’t get enough valid petitions in each district.
Still waiting to here if Gingrich qualified.
I’ve decided that if the only two people on my ballot are Romney and Paul, I’m going back to considering Bachmann and Santorum. If I can’t vote for any conservatives, there’s no point in eliminating any of them yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.