Democracy looks very different from the bottom than the top. Like I said, most don’t have experience dealing with it. You name it, the shenanigans come out to prevent people from upsetting the apple cart.
The end result seems to do their best to deny the people their choice.
As for your questions. I’ve worked in quality control, for a bunch of different organizations. Random sampling is what is frequently used. If errors turn up in the random samples, then they can use these samples to calculate with some precision how many errors exist throughout the whole sample.
They can do this with petition signatures. They will not check all the numbers, but they will check a certain number of random samples, to see if there is any errors. A clean sample, you’ll expect to see around 10 percent fail validation, because there’s simply no way to check them other than validation.
As for the database, a rate of 20 percent failure isn’t going to be overturned by database errors. A percent or two at most. It might be enough to get Newt back on the ballot, but that’s assuming all the errors made are against him.
As for the party rules, well, that’s why you go to the long and boring meetings back in 2009 in the VA republican party where they vote on these rules beforehand. The party bosses are the ones who decide, and wrt nominations, they have pretty much carte blanche. That’s the way the system works. If you aren’t a party member, you don’t have a say as to how the party selects their members.
To change the rules, would mean that enough VA GOP members would have to speak up their dissatisfaction with the primary results. If you aren’t a VA GOP member, then there’s really not much you can do in this situation. But, there’s nothing stopping people from getting memberships and going to all the meetings, and most importantly, voting.
Seems to me that the conservatives need to do at least 2 things:
First, if they really want this changed this year swamp the party leadership, and/or a legal challenge.
Second, Get on the ballot as precinct chairmen in all the districts, win, and replace the GOP leadership with conservatives.