Not to mention it would seem to affect Virginia economically by restricting itself in the election this way. Just seems stupid all the way around.
So far as I can tell, nobody is happy with this. Mullins wanted all the candidates on the ballot; I think he actually would prefer Perry, but he is officially neutral as Party chair.
I know many members of the RPV support Perry or Gingrich, and are not happy with the outcome. There were Perry and Gingrich supporters among the signature checkers as well, who were unhappy when they found bad signatures.
But sometimes you are stuck with outcomes you are unhappy with. We have a law, for good or for bad, that requires 10,000 signatures from registered voters. The RPV had some discretion in how they did the job they are assigned, but not carte blanche to ignore the requirements.
Contrary to opinion, this is not the first time they have ever checked signatures for validity. In the last election (2009 statewide primary) every signature/address was checked to prove they were from registered voters. This is not a new process. The 15,000-vote “waiver of checking” might have been new, because of the need to get the count done so people could go home for Christmas. But that was voted on by the RPV board, and has a good rational basis. As the RPV noted in their most recent memo, they have never seen a candidate with 15,000 signatures have 33% of those signatures rejected. And Ron Paul, who had fewer than 15,000 signatures, had all his checked and he had over 10,000 valid signatures, which supports the contention that if you get close to 15,000, you likely have 10,000 good ones.
Gingrich has admitted that 1500 of his signatures were forged by one collector — so it is clear Gingrich did not submit 10,000 valid signatures. BTW, if the forgeries were obvious, they would have been rejected even in the “cursory glance” which was done to “check” the 15,000+ signatures for Romney.
Lastly, is there anybody here who thinks that it would have been RIGHT, if there was a 10,000-vote rule, to allow Romney on the ballot if HE had submitted 11,000 signatures, and then admitted that 1500 of those signatures were forged?