Replies

“As I said, all the Senate candidates were able to easily get the signatures they needed. And we’ve had the large signature rules for years, and this was the first year there were so many incompetent campaigns.”

Except that the rules were changed sometime in November or December to up the amount required from 10,000 to 15,000, and also fixed it to where if you get above 15,000 your signatures will not be checked. There are also many other ridiculous nuances to consider in the entire way the state GOP of Virginia handles it.

There’s no real reason why major candidates shouldn’t be getting on a ballot. The only conclusion is that either the GOP of Virginia is incompetent, which is probably the case, or they’re corrupt. I’m happy with either option, especially when they tried pulling the loyalty oath nonsense as well.

First, I do agree with you that Virginia’s rules leading to eliminating viable national candidates in a presidential primary are ill-conceived and should be abolished. I even wrote an article about that, and sent it to all my representative contacts in government to try to get them to pass emergency legislation to get people back on the ballot.

But having a rule that shouldn’t be used is a different matter than claiming that there was a plot to keep people off the ballot. I know some of the players in our party organization, and they are all honorable men and women who worked hard to get republicans elected, and I don’t like seeing them smeared with baseless charges of malfeasance.

For example, you are completely wrong about your assertion that the “rules were changed”. The rules about the number of valid signatures have been in place for a long time. 10,000 valid signatures from registered voters, with 400 from each congressional district.

The “15,000” number isn’t a rule, it was part of the procedure for verifying the 10,000 signature rule. The RNC had gotten beat up (a court case) for not taking sufficient steps to verify signatures. In response, the new chair wrote up a procedure to be used.

In that procedure, noting that we have never found more than 33% of the signatures on a petition were faulty, it was decided that if you submitted 50% more signatures than needed, the counters would not do a signature-by-signature verification. Note that there is a presumption that people hwo are actually running for PResident of the United States, and being seriously considered for the position, wouldn’t actually stoop to widespread forging of signatures.

So, if you managed to submit more than 15,000 total signatures, the signatures were counted (with a cursory check that addresses were given), and if you also had 600 signatures from each congressional district, they presumed that 10,000 of your total would be found valid.

Ron Paul actually submitted 14,100 signatures. So every one of his signatures was checked. And he came in above the 10,000 mark — another case where a detailed check didn’t eliminate more than 33% of the count.

Heck, we assumed that Perry had enough, except too many of his didn’t even have addresses, and too many weren’t registered voters. Gingrich was on the edge, and then it turned out he hired people to collect signatures, and one of them DID forge signatures (note it wasn’t the campaign, and Gingrich reported the forgery — showing that a candidate is unlikely to forge signatures on their own accord).

As to the “rediculous nuances” — what are they? They do require a standard form, and each signature has to be witnessed, and each page notarized. It’s a bit tedious, but they do seem to have eliminated some of the more annoying rules like requiring signatures to be separated by county.

The same 10,000-signature rule existed in 2008, and most candidates were able to meet the number. I collected signatures for a couple of them; Fred Thompson made the ballot OK. Of course, the candidates all seemed to get the party apparatus involved, unlike this time around.

Again, I agree with you about the ballot. Signature rules are intended to keep frivoulous candidates off your ballot, by making candidates show they have some level of support in the state.

But in a federal election, there are other ways to show that a candidate is serious, even if they don’t have a good organization within a state. Virginia couldn’t eliminate candidates from the primary, all they could do is prevent Virginians from being able to VOTE for candidates — that was what is wrong with the process.