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.