Is this any way to choose a presidential candidate?:
First, the Virginia State board of elections issued four pages of instructions to candidates in May.Got that? May. Here are the instructions. Here is the section, FROM THE STATE Board of Elections (NOT THE RPV) about petitions:
Circulate on or after July 1, 2011;OK, these are the various pieces of misinformation corrected, with references, so far: That the signature requirement is optional, that addresses were not required by the state and the RPV made that up, that the RPV made up the reference to 15,000 signatures, and that the candidates just learned of these rules recently.Must be on the form prescribed by the State Board of Elections (copy enclosed). It is suggested that the candidate or group complete the top portion of the petition form and then print or photocopy as many copies of the form as needed. The form may not be altered in any way.
Must be signed by not less than 10,000 qualified voters in Virginia, including at least 400 qualified voters from each of Virginia's eleven congressional districts, who attest that they intend to participate in the primary of the same political party as the candidate named on the petition. Because many people who are not registered to vote will sign a petition, it is recommended that 15,000 - 20,000 signatures be obtained with at least 700 signatures from each congressional district.
Must provide the true signature, the printed full name and the full resident address of each qualified voter and the date each signed the petition.
Although the last four digits of the social security number is requested, it is not mandatory that it be provided.
Next:
On Tuesday, Romney was the first candidate to file his petitions with the state. Lt. Governor Bill Bolling personality delivered Romney’s 16,026 signatures to the state Board of Elections. The only other candidate to have over 15,000 signatures was Ron Paul.This corrects the misinformation that Romney submitted his signatures in November. Also, it corrects a minor error made that Ron Paul had fewer than 15,000 signatures (I thought it was 14,000, but apparently he turned in more than 15,000).
This blog entry also has some very GOOD arguments against what happened (as opposed to some of the arguments people have been using here -- I know some have used these arguments as well here):
For example, it is silly to take the VBE "guidance" to collect 15,000 signatures, and make it into a de-facto "we'll accept your signatures if you have 15,000". Of course, many here argue that we shouldn't check the signatures of Gingrich and Perry, so they can't object to the 15,000 rule, except to claim it should be 10,000. But it is reasonable for a campaign to argue that Romney and Paul need to have their signatures checked the same was as Gingrich and Perry did.
Another interesting piece of information:
In addition to that, I learned today that each signature is verified by only one person, with very minimal instruction, just two days before Christmas. Republican volunteers work late into the night to verify signatures. Who knows how good their concentration was in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve. The republican volunteer goes through a petition and strikes whatever number of signatures they deem not to be valid. No one verifies what any volunteer has done with his/her stack of petitions. What happens if the volunteer supports a candidate other than the one on the petition they’re examining? Might that volunteer nitpick every page of signatures and throw out many more than necessary? No one would ever know because no one checks.I'm not going to FAULT the volunteers, or credit the insinuation that they might purposely reject signatures to help their candidate. If a campaign cared, they could send their own volunteers, and ask that their pages be checked with their volunteers present. The reason only one volunteer was used was that there weren't enough volunteers to do more -- even with one volunteer per petition, it took them until the wee hours of the morning.
But this is a good sign that the process was flawed, and needs to be fixed.
Last thing, from the SBE guidance again:
A statement, signed by the candidate under oath, setting forth his name and the number of signatures on the petitions in the sealed containers must be attached to the first container. See Suggested Oath on the next page.If a candidate misstated the number of signatures, and was caught, they would be guilty of LYING UNDER OATH. If they knew they had collected false signatures, their oath would be false, and they would be guilty of perjury. So I really don't think we can assume candidates would lie about how many signatures they were submitting.
“For example, it is silly to take the VBE “guidance” to collect 15,000 signatures”
There is no “guidance” to collect 15,000 signatures.
For evidence I will refer you to CharlesWayneCT’s post regarding the State Bd of Elections.
“Because many people who are not registered to vote will sign a petition, it is recommended that 15,000 - 20,000 signatures be obtained with at least 700 signatures from each congressional district.”
You will note that your deflection from the VAGOP’s old and new rules is a huge FAIL. There is nothing here that changes the facts of what transpired within the VaGop in what you posted. It is a simple “RECOMMENDATION”.
Got it?
The law states that 10,000 is the number.
In elections in 08 and 10 and a few prior that that, the rule set forth by the VaGop clearly stated 10,000 was the number of signatures required.
No review of signatures has happened with the 10,000 being the number required.
Now, there is a letter out from VaGop stating that 15,000 is the new number to avoid review.
You can deny this all you want. But it is what happened and it is the truth. They changed the rules late in the game, to delete both Gingrich and Perry from the ballot.
End of story, unless you have additional information that negates what has happened.