Charles,
Just to make sure that I heard it right the first time, I went back and listened to Mark Levin speak about it again. I found it through an archive search on FR. The link is at post #17, here is the thread link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2828022/posts
For the record, I have written a check (max) for Romney and will vote for him no matter who he chooses as his VP.
As an original supporter of Santorums... It just takes a little more effort to pull the lever with McD on it.
Not trying to pick a fight... Just sayin it doesn’t give me warm and fuzzies.
WB
(sorry or any errors.. Golf course- iPhone)
I like Mark, and he lives in Virginia, but sometimes his level of detailed exploration of things is somewhat lacking.
What “changed” was not the requirement for signatures, but the seriousness with which the RPV approached the job of signature evaluation. And that wasn’t “last-minute”, it was a result of a lawsuit filed against the RPV.
Because a memo was sent out detailing the process in October, some people mistakenly thought the whole thing was changed in October, but that memo was simply documenting the process that was expected to be followed.
Other people were upset about a rule that said if you had 15,000 signatures, they would assume that 10,000 were good. But realize that rule didn’t keep anybody OUT of the contest — it means that if either Perry or Gingrich had gotten 15,000 signatures on their papers, it wouldn’t have mattered how many of their signatures were invalid, because nobody would have checked.
But in defense of that rule, there has NEVER been a case in Virginia where a person with 15,000 signatures didn’t have 10,000 good ones. And in this election, ROn Paul, who submitted 14,000 signatures, was checked just like Perry and Gingrich, and he had more than 10,000 valid signatures — which lends credence to the exception.
Romney was very organized in Virginia, and there was little doubt he would have his signatures. And as I said elsewhere, all 4 senate candidates had no trouble collecting signatures. And frankly, it was rediculous that Gingrich and Perry didn’t get 15,000 signatures. We had a general election during the time they were supposed to be collecting signatures. All they needed was 50 volunteers hanging out for a day at the 50 polling places. My precinct had over 1000 registered republicans vote that day. If half signed, that would ahve been 1/20th of the total signatures needed.
BTW, there was only ONE candidate who was collecting signatures at my polling place that day — Herman Cain. He had almost 25 signatures when I stopped by at 7am.
I was sad that Santorum didn’t even collect 10,000 signatures. But I was lived that Perry failed. I sent his team multiple e-mails offering to help collect signatures, and they never got back to me. He was at the RPV meeting in September, and didn’t have anybody there collecting signatures. He had a former RPV chair running his campaign, and I assumed they had the signature thing wrapped up. And they apparently didn’t circulate petitions at the local committee meeting either.